But the bridges are older, and in some places they are used for traffic to-day, spanning Jordan and Leontes. There is little causeway at the ends of them--their one business in these old days was to do the difficult and needful task of crossing water. Once across, the traveller might find his path or make it for himself. Parapets are not provided on the old bridges, and the surface is a flight of broad and shallow steps. If you walk unwarily and are drowned in the torrent below, that is no concern of these resolute but unluxurious bridge-builders. Their business is simply to span the stream. So effectively and conscientiously have they done this, that even when time and floods have broken the bridge, you may see the half of it still standing: the huge pier of stone and of mortar almost harder than stone stands at the side, and the actual arch is still flung across the water, wedged into an almost unbreakable strength by its keystone, while all the surface building above the arch has long been washed away. Such a ruin may be seen to-day on the coast some miles to the north of Tyre. It was in her fight with water, either for it in aqueducts or against it in quays and bridges, that Rome seems to have put out her utmost strength of masonry. Along the coasts both of the Mediterranean and of the Sea of Galilee, submerged stones and fragments of building may be seen, which bear testimony to this; and at Taricheæ, where a large fish-curing trade had to be provided for, there are remains of a dam and quay where Jordan swept round in a circle, affording a great length of water-frontage. But perhaps the most noticeable monuments of Rome in this dry and thirsty land are the [Illustration: THE FORECOURT OF THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.]