At the same time the work of repairing the Virgin's
fountain—i.e., the spring which supplies the Pool of Siloam—is going on. The water passes from the fountain to the pool through a tunnel built by Hezekiah. It was in this tunnel that was found the earliest Hebrew inscription—now in the Museum at Constantinople—which commemorates the cutting of the tunnel, and tells how the nay-vies working from each end met in the middle, just as they will do under the Simplon. This fountain has an intermittent flow,—that is, after several hours' flow there is a complete cessation for a short time, and then the water runs again. Curiously enough, the fountain was almost destroyed a few years ago by an attempt to increase the flow by blasting. Lately, however, some of the villagers of Siloam offered to restore the flow if they were given a hundred napoleons. They stopped up the holes through which the water ran to waste, and received the reward. It is a curious example of the hereditary instinct for managing the water supply having to be called in to correct the errors of science.
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