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turn aside."
That part of the city to which our worthy Gizbarim now hastened, and
which bore the name of its architect, King David, was esteemed the most
strongly fortified district of Jerusalem; being situated upon the steep
and lofty hill of Zion. Here, a broad, deep, circumvallatory trench,
hewn from the solid rock, was defended by a wall of great strength
erected upon its inner edge. This wall was adorned, at regular
interspaces, by square towers of white marble; the lowest sixty, and the
highest one hundred and twenty cubits in height. But, in the vicinity of
the gate of Benjamin, the wall arose by no means from the margin of the
fosse. On the contrary, between the level of the ditch and the basement
of the rampart sprang up a perpendicular cliff of two hundred and fifty
cubits, forming part of the precipitous Mount Moriah. So that when
Simeon and his associates arrived on the summit of the tower called
Adoni-Bezek-the loftiest of all the turrets around about Jerusalem, and
the usual place of conference with the besieging army-they looked down
upon the camp of the enemy from an eminence excelling by many feet that
of the Pyramid of Cheops, and, by several, that of the temple of Belus.
"
Verily," sighed the Pharisee, as he peered dizzily over the precipice,
the uncircumcised are as the sands by the seashore-as the locusts
"
in the wilderness! The valley of the King hath become the valley of
Adommin."
"And yet," added Ben-Levi, "thou canst not point me out a Philistine-no,
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