--- title: Times and Seasons description: Issues of 1845 to 1846. authors: - Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints editors: - Ebenezer Robinson - Don Carlos Smith - Smith, Joseph, Jr. - Taylor, John collections: - periodicals tags: - newspaper - times-and-seasons - nauvoo - nineteenth-century periodical: Times and Seasons volume: 6 number: 12 published: 1845-07-01 publisher: E. Robinson and D. C. Smith; later John Taylor publisher_place: Commerce and Nauvoo, Illinois language: en type: article reference: "“By the Editor of the Savannah Republican,” *Times and Seasons* 6, no. 12 (July 1, 1845): 952–953." printed_title: BY THE EDITOR OF THE SAVANNAH REPUBLICAN. source: url: https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1845-07-01_6_12 transcription: Text from the Centerplace.org transcription (https://www.centerplace.org/history/ts/v6n12.htm), with its page breaks; this Internet Archive scan is the reference copy (its OCR was used only as a witness for OCR repair) identifier: per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1845-07-01_6_12 start_page: 952 end_page: 953 curator_note: A Mormon newspaper published by the church in Nauvoo; included for historical study. Inclusion does not imply endorsement. rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1845 (Nauvoo, Illinois); published before 1931, so public domain in the United States source: https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1845-07-01_6_12 publication_year: 1845 --- # By the Editor of the Savannah Republican Modern Jerusalem is a staunch, strongly built city. The walls of the houses ore [are] most substantial, and are built of very compact limestone, which is mostly of a light or dark cream color. It has an appearance of great solidity, which is increased by the flying buttresses which every where spring over the streets. An earthquake that would demolish a portion of the town, would be apt to involve the whole of it in ruin-so compactly is it built together. The streets are filthy, and nowhere have I met with so many wretched deformed beggars-so many blind helpless beings-asking alms from early dawn till set of sun. The exterior of the houses towards the streets is most forbidding, looking jail like and gloomy, but entering the Courts, you see more cheerfulness, and some of the terraces have a very commanding look out. Domes appear every where. They rise above the principal rooms of all houses. There is no wood to construct roofs of, and thus the ceilings of the rooms are pleasingly vaulted. In no one thing are the accounts of travellers [travelers] so discrepant as to the modern town. Some writers draw of it a peerless picture, and others paint it in the most gloomy colors. Some, perhaps, have been there in the rainy, others in the bright season-as in most cases the truth seems to be about half way between the two extremes. It is neither so good nor so bad as it has been drawn, but it is a very respectable town, far better than most others in the East. The modern town does not cover the whole site of the ancient one. Mount Zion itself, on the South side, is without the present wall. On the North, or more directly on the North west side of the city, the old limit must have been a mile beyond the present one. The whole ground is cavernous cisterns-themselves probably more recent than those of the town taken by the Roman Legions. Excepting on a part of the North west side, the limits of the ancient city are well defined. The mountains are still 'round about Jerusalem,' and the features of the scenery are all bold and grand. On three sides, the precipitous steeps of the valley impose boundaries beyond which no buildings could ever have passed. It is said and is doubtless true, that the wall supporting Solomon's temple, on the side of the Valley of Jehoshaphat, was 450 feet high. On the West, or naturally the weakest side, the tenth Roman Legion was encamped. The present walls are well built and battlemented; but they have neither ditches, counterscarp walls nor other exterior defences [defenses]. They are modern, but worthy to bfilong [belong] to an age when gun powder was unknown, for they cannot stand two days against breaching batteries. The town has now a garrison of about fifteen hundred lubberly Turkish soldiers, and could be taken by escalade in ten minutes, against all the resistance the garrison could offer. The environs of Jerusalem are very striking. They form one vast necropolis-the very rock being perforated in all directions with tombs, which being near the bottom of the valley of Jehoshaphat, Kedron. Gihon, and Hinnor-These valleys, together with the Western Wall, form a circuit of two miles and a half-the whole circumference of the ancient town being, according to Josephus, rather more than four miles.