Within this house-like place that I have described, and at the western side, about eight feet of the upper part is covered with sculpture of various kinds, wrought on the face of the rock. It is rich, and of admirable execution. The part under this is hewn away, and a kind of portico made, twenty feet long, ten or twelve feet wide, and twelve feet high. I give these as the probable dimensions, as I did not measure them. At the south end of this portico, the rubbish, which had accumulated several feet, has been removed, and an opening was found cut through the solid rock. Only so much of the rubbish was removed as would enable a person, by creeping, to enter. After creeping a few feet, we entered a room of considerable size, say twelve feet square. From this room doorways opened to another room, and from this to others; most of them on the same level, but some of the passages lead to rooms below, and, in one place, the hollow sound which the floor gave clearly showed that there were yet other excavations beneath. These rooms had niches all around for receiving the dead. Originally these doorways had stone doors, with stone hinges. The place for hanging the doors was obvious, and we saw several of the broken doors made of a single stone slab. In one of the inner rooms we saw some richly carved covers of a sarcophagus; the sarcophagus itself was gone. The door of this room was lying there nearly entire; it was richly carved, and wrought in a kind of panel-work. The stone hinges were like those wooden hinges which we often meet with in cabins, stables, &c. On one side of the stone a piece is left at both ends to project out a few inches; holes are cut in the doorway of such a size as will receive these projections, the upper one made deep, the door put in, and made to turn on these points. These tombs, although called the Tombs of the Kings, are not believed to have been the place where the kings of Judah were interred. We are told that they were usually buried in the city of David,--that is, on Mount Zion. 2 Chron. xxiv. 16. We know not why they are so called; possibly because they are the most remarkable sepulchres that are known in the vicinity. Learning that at the distance of a mile or two to the north-west, on the same plain, there was a remarkable set of sepulchres, called the Sepulchre of the Judges, we concluded to visit them also. There are extensive beds of rock in this part of the plain, and in many places its upper surface is six, eight, and ten feet above the level of the soil. The rock is softer than that at the sepulchre of the kings, being of that soft, friable limestone, which, from the ease with which it is worked, is so much used in building. I could see that in all directions it had been quarried and removed.