Approaching the city from the west, along the Jojipa road, a low ridge is seen beyond it, barely overtopping the massive castle of David, and the higher buildings on Zion. It droops towards 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 round- ed and regular in form, and almost entirely colorless. You descend from the (iolden Gateway, or the Gate of St. Stephen, by a sudden and steep declivity, and no sooner is the bed of the valley reached than you again commence the ascent, for the foot of Olivet is in fact in the very hollow of the valley. So great is the effect of this proximity that, jjartly from that, and partly from the extreme clearness of the air, a spectator from the western part of Jerusalem imagines Olivet to rise immediately from the side of the Ilaram area (Porter, Handb. p. 103«; also Stanley, S. and P. p. 18G).
The best view of the mount is obtained from the city wall, near the St. Stephen's Gate (as in the preceding cut). There is a rocky platform, some fifty yards wide, runs along the wall, overhanging the dusky and vener- able olive-groves which partly fill up the bottom of the Kidron, 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 — Mo- riah and Olivet — overlap. About three quarters of a mile south of the Ilaram area, the Kidron turns east- ward, and there the lidffc of Olivet terminates; but that part of the ridge to which the name properly be- longs scarcely extends so far. The lower road to Beth- any crosses it in the parallel of the village of Silwfin [see Silo am], where there is a considerable depression. The section of the ridge south of tliat road appears in some aspects as a distinct hill, having a low rounded top, and descending in broken cliffs into the Kidron. This is now called by travellers " The Blount of Cor- ruption."
From the Church of the Ascension, which is the cen- tral point of Olivet, the ridge runs due north for about a mile, and then sweeps to the west around 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 prob- ably the Scopus (<!. v.) of Josephus ( War, v, 2, 3).
The eastern limits of Olivet are not so easily defined. 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 3500 feet in a distance of 14 miles. The eastern declivity of Olivet thus shades gradually off into the wilderness of Juda-a. There is no dividing- line; and from the east "Tlic Mount" appears as one of the crowns of the mountain- range. We maj' assume Bethany, however, as the his- torical, if not the strict!}' physical limit of Olivet in this direction; though the slope below the village 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 but not highest point — the Church of the Ascension — is due east of the Great Mosque, the site of the Temple, and it is one fifih of a mile (in an air-line) distant from it. From the mosque on the crown of Moriah to the Ilaram wall on its eastern brow is 625 feet ; from the wall to the western base of Olivet, in the bottom of the Kidron, is 450 feet ; from the bottom of the Kidron to the Church of the Ascension, 2000 feet ; from the churcli to the assumed eastern base of '"The Mount," in the line north of Bethany, 4000 feet. The relative elevations are as follows :
Height of Olivet above Bethany 433 feet.
" " " Bed of the Kidron sua "
" " " Moriah 224 "
" " " N.W. angle of the city 09 "
About 530 feet north of the Church of the Ascension is the nearest eminence of the summit, called b}' monks and travellers Viri Galilcsi; it is only a few feet lower than the church. At a somewhat less distance north- eastward is the culminating point of the Mount of Ol- ives, now occupied as a Mohammedan cemeter}'. The Mount of Offence is about 3700 feet distant south-west- erh' from the Church of the Ascension, and is nearly 250 feet lower than Olivet,
The outline of Olivet is uniform. The curves are unbroken. Its western face has regular declivities of whitish soil, composed of disintegrated limestone, inter- rupted 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 as- pect, especially in summer and autumn, is singularly bleak. In early spring the painful bareness is in some measure relieved by the coloring — green corn, brilliant wild-flowers, the soft gray tint of the olive leaves, and the dark foliage of the fig. The whole hill-side is rude- ly cultivated in little terraced strips of wheat and bar- ley, with here and there some straggling vines trailing along the ground or hanging over the ledges and ter- race 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 together, though nowhere so close as to form groves. INIost of them are old, gnarled, and stunted ; a few are propped up and in the last stage of decay ; but scarcely any j'oung, vigor- ous trees are met with. The base of the hill along the Kidron is more rugged than any other part of the west- ern side. At and near the village of Silwan are preci- pices of rock from twenty to thirty feet high, which continue at intervals around the Mount of Corruption. These cliil's are studded with excavated tombs ; and in Silwan, and northward, some of them are hewn into chaste fa(;;ades and detached monuments. The hill-side is here covered also with the tombstones of the modern Jewish cemetery. It is tlie favorite burial-place of the children of Abraham, and the spot where they believe the final judgment will take place.