A high battlemented wall encompasses the modern city.It runs for half a mile along the brow of the Kidron valley, facing Olivet,and then turns at right angles and zigzags across Moriah, the Tyropean, and Zion,to the brow of Hinnom. The whole circuit is two miles and a half.The city was always fortified, and the walls and towers formed its most prominent features.Hence the language of the exulting Psalmist:"Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof, mark ye well her bulwarks."Jerusalem has no suburbs. There is no shading off of the cityinto the country―no long streets radiating from a centre, then straggling houses,and villas, and gardens, such as we are accustomed to see in English towns.The moment you pass the gates of Jerusalem you are in the country,―a country open, bare, without a single house, and almost desolate.Not a green spot is visible, and not a tree, save here and there a little clump of gnarled, dusky olives.Rounded hill-tops, and long reaches of plain, strown with heaps of gray limestone,extend from the walls far away to the north and to the south.There is no grandeur, beauty, or richness in the scenery. It is bleak and featureless.Hence the sad disappointment felt by most travellers on approaching Jerusalemfrom the west and the south. They can only see the serrated lineof gray Saracenic walls extending across a section of a bleak, rocky plateau.
一座有着城垛的高墙围绕着这座现代化城市，它与汲沦谷相距大约半英里，面朝奥利弗山，然后转了个右弯，曲折地穿过摩利亚、提洛潘和锡安，最后到达欣嫩子谷的谷顶，整段行程是两英里半。这座城市一直都很坚固，城墙和塔楼是它最突出的特点。因此，诗人们会洋洋得意道：你们当周游锡安，四围绕行，数点城楼，留心看他的屏障。耶路撒冷没有郊区，没有从城市向乡村的荫凉，没有从市中心辐射出来的长长的街道，也没有我们在英国城镇中经常看到的零星的房屋、别墅和花园。在你进入耶路撒冷的那一刻，你便进入了一个空旷的、没有一栋房屋的、到处一片荒凉景象的乡村。这里看不到一丝绿色，看不到一棵树，只有几丛枝繁叶茂、暗色的橄榄。圆形的山顶、广阔的平原、零星分散的大量灰色石灰石，从远处的城墙一路延伸到北边和南边。这里的景色不壮丽、不美艳、也不丰饶，它们暗淡无光、平平无奇。因此，大多从西边和南边前往耶路撒冷的旅行者们都大失所望，他们只能看到灰色的撒拉逊岩壁锯齿状的线条延伸到一片荒凉的、多石的高原之上。
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