From the Valley of Jeremiah the traveller towards Zion descends into that which bears the name of Turpentine, and is deeper and narrower than the other. Here are observed some vineyards, and a few patches of doura. He next arrives at the brook where the youthful David picked up the five smooth stones, with one of which he slew the gigantic Goliath. Having crossed the stream, he perceives the village of Heriet-Lefta on the bank of another dry channel, which resembles a dusty road. El Bir_ appears in the distance on the summit of a lofty hill on the way to Nablous, the Shechem of the Israelites and the Neapolis of the Herods. He now pursues his course through a desert, where wild fig-trees thinly scattered wave their embrowned leaves in the southern breeze. The ground, which had hitherto exhibited some verdure, becomes altogether bare; the sides of the mountains, expanding themselves, assume at once an appearance of greater grandeur and sterility. Presently all vegetation ceases; even the very mosses disappear. The confused amphitheatre of the mountains is tinged with a red and vivid colour. In this dreary region he keeps ascending a whole hour to gain an elevated hill which he sees before him; after which he proceeds during an equal space across a naked plain strewed with loose stones. All at once, at the extremity of this plain, he perceives a line of Gothic walls flanked with square towers, and the tops of a few buildings peeping above them;--he beholds Jerusalem, once the joy of the whole earth! "I can now account," says M. Chateaubriand, "for the surprise expressed by the crusaders and pilgrims at the first sight of Jerusalem, according to the reports of historians and travellers. I can affirm that whoever has, like me, had the patience to read nearly two hundred modern accounts of the Holy Land; the Rabbinical compilations, and the passages in the ancient writers respecting Judea, still knows nothing at all about it. I paused with my eyes fixed on Jerusalem, measuring the height of its walls, reviewing at once all the recollections of history from the patriarch Abraham to Godfrey of Bouillon, reflecting on the total change accomplished to the world by the mission of the Son of Man, and in vain seeking that Temple, not one stone of which is left upon another. Were I to live a thousand years, never should I forget that desert, which yet seems to be pervaded by the greatness of Jehovah and the terrors of death."[72]