the eastern wall passes straight along the brow of Mount Moriah, with the deep valley of Jehoshaphat below; the southern wall crosses Mount Zion, with the vale of Hinnom at its feet; and the western wall is carried over a more uniform level, near the summit of the bare hills which terminate at the Jaffa gate.[100] Turning towards the east, the traveller sees at the foot of the hill the little village of Bethany, so often mentioned in the history of our Lord and of his personal followers; and at a greater distance, a little more on the left, he beholds the magnificent scenery of the Jordan and the Dead Sea. There are two roads from Jerusalem to Bethany; the one passing over the Mount of Olives; the other, the shorter and easier, winding round the eastern side of it. This village is now both small and poor, the cultivation of the soil around it being very much neglected by the indolent Arabs into whose hands it has fallen. Here are shown the ruins of a house, said to have belonged to Lazarus whom our Saviour raised from the dead; and, in the immediate neighbourhood, the faithful pilgrim is invited to devotion in a grotto, which is represented as the actual tomb wherein the miracle was performed. The dwellings of Simon the Leper, of Mary Magdalene, and of Martha are pointed out by the Mussulmans, who traffic on the credulity of ignorant Christians. Nay, they undertake to identify the spot where the barren fig tree withered under the curse, and the place where Judas put an end to his life, oppressed by a more dreadful malediction. There is no traveller of any nation, whatever may be his creed or his impressions in regard to the gospel, who does not make the usual journey from the Jewish capital to Bethlehem the place of our Lord's nativity. The road, as we find related, passes over ground extremely rocky and barren, diversified only by some cultivated patches bearing a scanty crop of grain, and by banks of wild-flowers which grow in great profusion. On the way the practised guide points out the ruined tower of Simeon, who upon beholding the infant Messiah expressed his readiness to leave this world; the Monastery of Elias, now in possession of the Greeks; and the tomb of Rachel, rising in a rounded top like the whitened sepulchre of an Arab sheik. "This," says the honest Maundrell, "may probably be the true place of her interment; but the present sepulchral monument can be none of that which Jacob erected, for it appears plainly to be a modern and Turkish structure." Farther on is the well of which David longed to drink, and of which his mighty men, at the risk of their lives, procured him a supply; and here opens to view, in a great valley, that most interesting of all pastoral scenes, where the angel of the Omnipotent appeared by night to the shepherds, to announce the glad tidings that Christ was born in Bethlehem.[101]