as it were, into a plan of itself, and even into a guide to itself.
This is especially true, as may be suggested in a moment,
regarding the direction of the roads leading out of it.
But anyhow, a man must decide which way he will leave the city;
he cannot merely drift out of the city as he drifts out of the modern
cities through a litter of slums. And there is no better way to get
a preliminary plan of the city than to follow the wall and fix the gates
in the memory. Suppose, for instance, that a man begins in the south
with the Zion Gate, which bears the ancient name of Jerusalem.
This, to begin with, will sharpen the medieval and even the Western
impression first because it is here that he has the strongest
sentiment of threading the narrow passages of a great castle;
but also because the very name of the gate was given to this south-western
hill by Godfrey and Tancred during the period of the Latin kingdom.
I believe it is one of the problems of the scholars why the Latin
conquerors called this hill the Zion Hill, when the other is obviously
the sacred hill. Jerusalem is traditionally divided into four hills,
but for practical purposes into two; the lower eastern hill where
stood the Temple, and now stands the great Mosque, and the western
where is the citadel and the Zion Gate to the south of it.
I know nothing of such questions; and I attach no importance to
the notion that has crossed my own mind, and which I only mention
in passing, for I have no doubt there are a hundred objections to it.
But it is known that Zion or Sion was the old name of the place
before it was stormed by David; and even afterwards the Jebusites
remained on this western hill, and some compromise seems to have
been made with them. Is it conceivable, I wonder, that even in
the twelfth century there lingered some local memory of what had
once been a way of distinguishing Sion of the Jebusites from Salem
of the Jews? The Zion Gate, however, is only a starting-point here;