What Captain Conder speaks of as "vaults north of the church," turn out to be the tops of houses. They are four in number, each 75 feet long by 28 feet wide, and faced the street. They were divided (one or two of them at least) into apartments by means of arches. The lower courses of the walls, to the height of several feet, are of squared stones, while the upper portions and the roofs are of rubble work, which was covered with a heavy coating of plaster. The threshold of one has been exposed, which is 6 feet in the clear, and the sides of the doorway show excellent work. Among the ruins there are two sections of marble columns, each 33 inches in diameter. Three large cisterns have been found, two of which were nearly full of water; the mouths of these, which were closed, were many feet below the surface of the ground before the excavations began, hence no one knows how old the water in them may be. Some of the slabs with which the church was paved were 6 feet long by 2½ feet wide. In the church two pieces of cornice were found, each 8 feet in length. One is entire and quite plain, while the other is broken in the middle. It is upon this that the figures of Christ and his twelve apostles were painted. They can still be traced, although exposure has nearly obliterated the colors. Pottery and a considerable quantity of broken glass have been found and some small articles in marble of no great value. The top of a certain block of marble has been formed into a basin, and a hole drilled the entire length of the block for the water to run off. South of the mosaic floor and of the east end of the main building there is a large underground chamber with seven openings (each the size of a man's body) to the surface. The chamber is 12 feet wide and nearly 20 feet long, but the depth is not yet ascertained, owing to the accumulation of _debris_ on the bottom. On the west and north sides a wall of solid rock appears to a depth of 6 feet, showing that the chamber was excavated in part at least in the solid rock. The use of this chamber does not appear evident, unless it may have been a store room. The place within the city shown as "Peter's Prison" consists of a similar chamber (not dug in the solid rock, however), with similar openings in the ceiling or roof. The ruins extend underground some distance to the east of the mosaic floor, and efforts are being made to purchase the land in that direction, in order to allow of the excavations being extended there. It is almost equally certain that the buildings extended to the south and southeast of the present plat of ground. But the owners of the land are jealous, and everybody is superstitious; consequently, excavations must be abandoned, or move with aggravating slowness.