_Its position._--Jerusalem is well described in Smith’s Dict. of the Bible. It lies near the summit of the broad mountain ridge, or high, uneven table-land which extends from the Plain of Esdraelon to the desert of the south. This tract is everywhere not less than from 20 to 25 miles in breadth, and has a surface rocky and uneven. Its height at Jerusalem is 2500 feet above the Mediterranean Sea; but it continues to rise towards the south, until, in the vicinity of Hebron, the elevation is nearly 3000 feet. The city occupies the southern termination of a table-land which is cut off from the country round it on the west, south, and east sides, by ravines more than usually deep and precipitous. These ravines leave the level of the table-land, the one on the west and the other on the north-east of the city, and fall rapidly until they form a junction below its south-east corner. The eastern one--the Valley of the Kedron, commonly called the Valley of Jehoshaphat--runs nearly straight from north to south. But the western one--the Valley of Hinnom--runs south for a time, and then takes a sudden bend to the east until it meets the Valley of Jehoshaphat, after which the two rush off as one to the Dead Sea. How sudden is their descent may be gathered from the fact that the level at the point of junction--about a mile and a quarter from the starting-point of each--is more than 600 feet below that of the upper plateau from which they commenced their descent. Thus while on the north there is no material difference between the general level of the country outside the walls and that of the highest parts of the city, on the other three sides, so steep is the fall of the ravines, so trench-like their character, and so close do they keep to the promontory, at whose foot they run, as to leave on the beholder the impression of the ditch at the foot of a fortress, rather than of valleys formed by nature.
_By favour of the Palestine Exploration Fund._]
The promontory thus encircled is itself divided by a longitudinal ravine--called the Tyropœon Valley, running up it from south to north, rising gradually from the south like the external ones, till at last it arrives at the level of the upper plateau, dividing the central mass into two unequal portions. Of these two, that on the west--the Upper City of the Jews, the Mount Zion of modern tradition--is the higher and more massive; that on the east--Mount Moriah--is at once considerably lower and smaller, so that, to a spectator from the south, the city appears to slope sharply towards the east. The central valley, at about half-way up its length, threw out a companion valley on its left or west side, which made its way up to the general level of the ground at the present Jaffa Gate.