own imprudent boldness.[79] In the interior of the rock whereon the Sakhara stands there is a cave, into which Dr. Richardson could not obtain admittance. He was four times in the mosque, and went twice thither under the express assurance that its doors should be thrown open to him. But when he arrived the key was always wanting, and when the keeper of it was sought he could never be found. Ali Bey, who encountered no obstacle, reveals all the mystery of this subterranean mansion. It is a room forming an irregular square of about eighteen feet surface, and eight feet high in the middle. The roof is that of a natural vault, quite irregular. In descending the staircase, there is upon the right-hand, near the bottom, a little tablet of marble, bearing the name of El Makam Souleman, the Place of Solomon. A similar one upon the left is named El Makam Daoud, the Place of David. A cavity or niche on the south-west side of the rock is called El Makam Ibrahim, the Place of Abraham. A similar concave step at the north-west angle is described as El Makam Djibrila, the Place of Gabriel; and a sort of stone table at the north-east angle is denominated El Makam el Hoder, the Place of Elias. In the roof of the apartment, exactly in the middle, there is an aperture almost cylindrical through the whole thickness of the rock, about three feet in diameter. This is the Place of the Prophet. M. Burckhardt observed a copy of the Koran, the leaves of which were four feet long, and more than two feet and a half broad. Tradition reports that it belonged to the Caliph Omar; but he saw a similar one in the grand mosque at Cairo, and another at Mecca, to both of which the same origin is assigned. The drawings supplied by this enterprising traveller give a very distinct notion of the extent and magnificence of the great Mussulman temple,--the most prominent object in the modern Jerusalem, and occupying the site of the still more interesting edifice erected by Solomon in the proudest period of Jewish history.