Continuing my walk on Wednesday, I passed one of the numerous threshing floors of the country.  This one was the face of a smooth rock, but they are often the ground on some elevated spot, where a good breeze can be had to blow away the chaff, for the grain is now threshed and cleaned by the primitive methods of long ago.  After the grain has been tramped out (1 Cor. 9:9), the straw, now worn to chaff, is piled up, and when a favorable wind blows, a man tosses it in the air with a wooden fork.  The grain falls in a pile at his feet and the chaff is carried aside some distance.  When this operation has been carried on as long as is profitable, the wheat and what chaff remains in it are thrown into the air with a wooden shovel, called in our Bibles a “fan.” (Matt. 3:12.) The final cleaning is done by washing the grain, or with a sieve.

The Tombs of the Kings, which may never have contained a king, are extensive and interesting.  They are surrounded by a wall, and to reach them the visitor must go down a very wide stairway.  The steps probably do not number more than twenty-five, but the distance from one side of the stairs to the other is twenty-seven feet.  There are channels cut in the rock to carry the water that comes down these steps to the cisterns, two in number, one of which is a good-sized room cut in the rock at the side of the stairway.  It contained about three feet of water when I saw it, although there had been no rain in Jerusalem for half a year.  The other one, at the bottom of the stairs, is much larger, and was empty.  The vaulted roof is supported by a column, and there are steps leading from one level of the floor to another.

Turning to the left at the foot of the big stairway, we passed through an arch cut through the rock into a court made by excavating the earth and stone to a depth of perhaps twenty feet.  It is ninety feet long and eighty-one feet wide.  The entrance to the tombs is by a vestibule cut in the rock at one side of the court, and it appears that this once had a row of pillars along the front, like veranda posts.  We went down a few steps and stooped low enough to pass through an opening about a yard high.  Beyond this we found ourselves in a good-sized room, cut in the solid rock.  There are five of these rooms, and so far as the appearance is concerned, one might suppose they had been made in modern times, but they are ancient.  The bodies were usually buried in “pigeon-holes” cut back in the walls of the rooms, but there are some shelf tombs, which are sufficiently described in their name.  One room seems never to have been completed, but there are burial places here for about forty people.