The first wall began on the north at the _Tower Hippicus_, and passing by the _Xystus_ joined on to the _Palace of the Council_, and ended at the west gate of the Temple. It was strengthened with much care and expense by David, Solomon, and their successors. In examining its course on the present ground, I started from the castle of David, going eastward in a line parallel to 'David's street' as far as the _Mekhemeh_ (the Turkish law courts), and thence to the west wall of the _Haram-es-Sherîf_. In order to identify the towers of Hippicus, Phasaëlus, and Mariamne, I frequently and carefully examined the fortress[109]. In it there are still three towers, one on the west, just south of the Jaffa gate, whose architecture, as far as it is visible, appears mediæval; another to the east of this, built of stones with large rustic work of the Herodian pattern; and a third to the south of these two, resembling the first. In all three I ascertained that the Jewish masonry is founded on the rock, and that, for a height of five feet above the ground, they are cased with large stones, roughly rusticated; but in the middle tower the Jewish masonry continues about 39 feet from the bottom of the ditch--only the _stones_, however, are of the Herodian period, the architecture is of a later date, belonging to the time when art was declining in the country[110]; for we see that these interesting remains are used without the slightest care; being arranged without any regard to their size, and most of them shewing the marks of the clamps, by which they were formerly bolted together inside the wall; so that they have evidently been placed in reverse order[111]. The three towers are solid inside to a height of 11 feet, and the lower part of the ditch (14 feet deep) that surrounds them on the north, east, and south, is cut in the rock; the west tower is nearly 25 cubits square, the centre 40, the south 20. I adopt, then, Williams' opinion, that the tower Hippicus stood on the foundation of the first, Phasaëlus on the second, and Mariamne on the third. This identification seems to agree with Josephus' description[112]; so that these are the positions of the three ancient towers, which Titus ordered to be spared, "in order to demonstrate to posterity what kind of a city it was, and how well fortified, which the Roman valour had subdued[113]."