_Difficulties of the Work._--It is impossible to read the detailed accounts of Warren’s work at Jerusalem without feeling an admiration for the courage and patience of the explorers, and without being sometimes amused at the ludicrous predicaments into which they occasionally got. They have been jammed in aqueducts, wedged in chasms, and walled up behind falling heaps of _debris_. They have had to go down ladders too short for reascending, to squeeze down apertures that have taken the skin off the shoulders, and have been half drowned in cisterns at the bottom. In the Tyropœon the soil is so soaked with sewage that it poisons the flesh wherever it touches a scratch. In the Kedron Valley the soil is so loose that it rushes into the galleries, almost flowing like a fluid, and drives the men out. In the Siloam tunnel they more than once ran the risk of being drowned. In the Ophel shaft a loose stone, weighing eight cwt., threatened momentarily to fall upon their heads. Once when the Arab labourers had gone down a shaft, where the ancient bed of the Tyropœon runs out, 90 feet from the south-west angle, they had descended 79 feet when they came upon a stone slab. They began breaking it up with a hammer, when presently the pieces fell in, the hammer disappeared, and the men, in terror lest they should fall into unknown depths, rushed to the surface, sought out the serjeant, and assured him that they had found the bottomless pit! The awful depth proved to be just 6 feet more to the solid rock!
Warren had often to dig in people’s gardens, or to mine under their houses, or sink shafts near to their sacred places, and it required much tact to deal with the prejudices of the Mohammedans, and to satisfy all claims for compensation. In the neighbourhood of Jerusalem a piece of garden ground may belong to one man, be rented by another, while a dozen people claim an interest in the crops that grow upon it. Sometimes Warren’s labourers have been dragged before the judges and threatened with imprisonment, or told that they shall be sent to do forced labour on the Jaffa Road. When Warren was working at the Virgin’s Fountain there was much commotion among the people of Siloam. Work was to be resumed in the morning; but one cantankerous sheikh, taking it into his head that Englishmen had no business out of their own country, effectually stayed proceedings by sending a bevy of damsels to the Fount to wash. On one occasion a Turkish officer of Engineers, dressed in full uniform, approached, in no friendly spirit, to examine one of the shafts. If he had chosen to give an adverse report the work would have been stopped. He knew that Warren was in command, but he marched magnificently past him without deigning to notice him, and was going straight for the head of the shaft. But Warren passed on rapidly before him, threw over the ladder which some lady visitors had been using, blew out the light, and descended by a rope. The Turk, hearing a crash, and seeing Warren disappear in the darkness, was afraid that something terrible had occurred, which he did not wish to be responsible for, and lost no time in turning his steps away. But, after all, when we consider that the Sanctuary at Jerusalem is as sacred to the Mohammedans as the precincts of Westminster Abbey to ourselves, it is marvellous how much Sir Charles Warren succeeded in effecting, and with how little friction he did it.