The Valley of Jehoshaphat stretches between the eastern walls of the city and the Mount of Olives, containing a great variety of objects, to which allusion is made in the Sacred Writings. It was sometimes called the King's Dale, from a reference to an event recorded in the history of Abraham, and was afterward distinguished by the name of Jehoshaphat, because that sovereign erected in it a magnificent tomb. This narrow vale seems to have always served as a burying-place for the inhabitants of the holy city: there you meet with monuments of the most remote ages, as well as of the most modern times: thither the descendants of Jacob resort from the four quarters of the globe, to yield up their last breath; and a foreigner sells to them, for its weight in gold, a scanty spot of earth to cover their remains in the land of their forefathers. Observing many Jews, whom I could easily recognise by their yellow turbans, quick dark eyes, black eyebrows, and bushy beards, walking about the place, and reposing along the Brook Kedron in a pensive mood, the pathetic language of the Psalmist occurred to me, as expressing the subject of their meditation--'By the rivers we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.' Upon frequently inquiring the motive that prompted them in attempting to go to Jerusalem, the answer was, 'To die in the land of our fathers.'[95] This valley or dale still exhibits a very desolate appearance. The western side is a high chalk-cliff supporting the walls of the city; above which you perceive Jerusalem itself; while the eastern acclivity is formed by the Mount of Olives and the Mount of Offence, so called from the idolatry which oppresses the fame of Solomon. These two hills are nearly naked, and of a dull red colour. On their slopes are seen, here and there, a few bleak and parched vines, some groves of wild olive-trees, wastes covered with hyssop, chapels, oratories, and mosques in ruins. At the bottom of the valley you discover a bridge of a single arch, thrown across the channel of the Brook Kedron. The stones in the Jewish cemetery look like a heap of rubbish at the foot of the Mount of Offence, below the Arab village of Siloane, the paltry houses of which are scarcely to be distinguished from the surrounding sepulchres. From the stillness of Jerusalem, whence no smoke arises and no noise proceeds,--from the solitude of these hills, where no living creature is to be seen,--from the ruinous state of all these tombs, overthrown, broken, and half-open, you would imagine that the last trumpet had already sounded, and that the Valley of Jehoshaphat was about to render up its dead.