Approaching the city from the west, along the Joppa road, a low ridge is seen beyond it, barely overtopping the massive castle of David, and the higher buildings on Zion. It droops toward the right, revealing the pale blue mountains of Moab in the distant background ; and it runs away to the left until it appears to join other ridges. It has no striking features. It is rounded and regular in form, and almost entirely colourless. The air is so transparent, too, that it appears to rise immedi ately out of the city. Looking from the western avail of Zion, or from the ramparts of the castle, one would suppose there was no intervening valley. In the distance its top is almost horizontal ; a nearer view makes it wavy ; and at length, on ap proaching it, three summits, or eminences, can be distinguished. The central and highest is crowned with the dome and minaret of the Church of the Ascension ; and the other two equidistant to the right and left, and of nearly equal altitude. Photo graphs show these features as they meet the eye, and consequently appear somewhat flat and un interesting ; but in every sketch and painting the writer has seen, the imagination of the artist has greatly increased both the apparent distance of Olivet from the city, and its elevation ; thus sacri ficing truth to beauty and effect.
The best view of the mount is obtained from the north-east angle of the city wall. There a rocky platform, some fifty yards wide, runs along the wall, overhanging the dusky and venerable olive groves which partly fill up the bottom of the Kid ron, a hundred feet below. From the bottom of the glen rises the side of Olivet, in gray terraced slopes, and white limestone crags, to a height of about six hundred feet. Farther south, opposite the Haram, the Kidron contracts so as barely to leave room for a torrent bed. Its general course is from north to south ; but it winds considerably, so that the roots of the opposite hills—Moriah and Olivet—overlap. About three-quarters of a mile south of the Haram area, the Kidron turns east ward, and there the ridge of Olivet terminates ; but that part of the ridge to which the name pro perly belongs scarcely extends so far. The lower road to Bethany crosses it in the parallel of the village of Silvein [StLoAm], where there is a con siderable depression. The section of the ridge south of that road appears in some aspects as a distinct hill, having a low rounded top, and de scending in broken cliffs into the Kidron. This is now called by travellers The Mount of Corrup tion,' and by natives, 7ebel Eaten el-Hawa.
From the Church of the Ascension, which is the central point of Olivet, the ridge runs due north for about a mile, and then sweeps to the west round a bend of the Kidron. At the elbow it is crossed by the road from Anathoth ; and the part west of this road is most probably the Scopus of Josephus (Bell. Yua'. v. 2. 3).
The eastern limits of Olivet are not so easily de fined. It forms the brow of the mountain-chain ; and from its top there is an uninterrupted, though irregular, descent to the Jordan valley—a descent of about 370o feet in a distance of ten miles. The eastern declivity of Olivet thus shades gradu ally off into the wilderness of Judea. There is no and from the east The Mount' appears as one of tne crowns of the mountain range. We may assume Bethany, however, as the historical, if not the strictly physical, limit of Olivet in this direction ; though the slope below the vil lage is quite as great as that above it.
A few measurements and elevations will now most satisfactorily exhibit the position and features of Olivet. Its central and highest point—the Church of the Ascension—is due east of the Great Mosque, the site of the Temple, and it is 1035 yards distant from it. This shows the exact dis tance and relative positions of the summits of Moriah and Olivet. From the mosque on the crown of Moriah to the Haram wall on its eastern brow is 200 yards ; from the wall to the western base of Olivet, in the bottom of the Kidron, is 165 yards ; from the bottom of the Kidron to the Church of the Ascension, 670 yards ; from the Church to the assumed eastern base of The Mount,' in the line of Bethany,* 1200 yards. The measurements are horizontal. The relative eleva tions are as follows : Height of Olivet above Bethany . . 927 ft.
Do. do. Bed of the Kidron 560 „ Do. do. Moriah . . 295 „ Do. do. N. W. angle of the city . • ,1 About soo yards north of the Church of the Ascension is the eminence, or summit, called by monks and travellers Viri ; it is only a few feet lower than the church. At about an equal distance southward is the third summit, not quite so lofty ; and from this latter to the culmi nating point of the Mount of Offence is moo yards, south by west. The elevation of the Mount of Offence has not been ascertained, but it appears to be at least iso feet lower than Olivet.
The outline of Olivet is uniform. The curves are unbroken. Its western face has regular decli vities of whitish soil, composed of disintegrated limestone, interrupted here and there by large rocky crowns, long ledges, and rude terrace walls. There is no grandeur, no picturesque ruggedness, no soft beauty ; and the aspect, especially in summer and autumn, is singularly bleak. In early spring, the painful bareness is in some measure relieved by the colouring—green corn, brilliant wild-flowers, the soft gray tint of the olive leaves, and the dark foliage of the fig. The effect of this combination of colours is very strange ; there is nothing like it in this country. It has been caught with an artist's eye, and represented with an artist's genius, in the beautiful picture of Seddon, and also in some of Holman Hunt's charming sketches. The whole hill-side is rudely cultivated in little terraced strips of wheat and barley ; with here and there some straggling vines trailing along the ground, or hanging over the ledges and terrace walls. Fig trees are abundant, but olives are still, as they were in our Lord's days, the prevailing trees. The mount has as good a title now as perhaps it ever had to the name Olivet. Olive-trees dot it all over ; in some places far apart, in others close to gether, though nowhere so close as to form groves. Most of them are old, gnarled, and stunted ; a few are propped up and in the last stage of decay ; but scarcely any young vigorous trees are met with. The base of the hill along the Kidron is more rugged than any other part of the western side. At and near the village of Silwan are preci pices of rock from twenty to thirty feet high, which continue at intervals round the Mount of Corruption. These cliffs are studded with exca vated tombs ; and in SilwIn, and northward, some of them are hewn into chaste facades and detached monuments. The hill-side is here covered also with the tombstones of the modem Jewish ceme tery.