In the neighbourhood of the city, on the north and north-west, remains of conduits are found, by which perhaps water was brought into the city, but I have not been able to discover whence the supply came; and there are, besides, some reservoirs and cisterns, none of which date from a remote period. The most important work, as regards its size, is the pool at the head of the Kidron valley, which I believe to have been constructed solely to collect and preserve the waters for the wants of those who dwelt in the neighbourhood, and to prevent the streams, flowing from the adjoining hill-sides, from being absorbed in the ground. At one time I thought that a subterranean conduit took the water from the pool into the city; but after the most careful examination of the ground in the vicinity, I am able to declare that no such conduit exists. The reasons which have led me to this conclusion will appear in the following account of my investigations. The people of the country had informed me that at night, when the city was perfectly quiet, the noise of flowing water could be heard beneath the Damascus Gate by any one who placed his ear on the ground. I made the experiment several times, and found it to be the case. When I excavated the ancient North Gate (in the foundations of the present Damascus Gate), as I have already described in the second chapter[887], I descended into the cisterns just on the north of the gate, and repeated the experiment at the bottom of them, and here I perceived more distinctly the gurgling of water, which was still more audible after Said Pasha, Commandant of the garrison of Jerusalem, had emptied these two cisterns of the rubbish that encumbered them. It must also be observed that the noise is heard louder after rain than at other times. This, therefore, led me to believe that there was a conduit which transported the water into the city, and consequently I many times made careful investigations in the tract of land between the Kidron Pool and the Damascus Gate; but these all failed in producing the desired result; and after levelling the ground, penetrating into cisterns, and removing ruins, I came to the conclusion that its existence was impossible; for, if it had been constructed, it must have run at a great depth underground, and been wholly excavated in the rock. A work of this kind, especially for such a distance, would have been too much for Jewish science; for all the other conduits in Palestine which can be assigned to an early period, if not covered with long slabs, as is common, are not much below the level of the ground, so that there are apertures at intervals to give them light. Nor is this the only reason against the existence of a conduit; for in examining the sewer in the Tyropoeon valley inside the city, near the Damascus Gate, I obtained permission from the Pasha, when it was repaired, to deepen the excavation, and found no trace of a water-course