3-070-850 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Jacob's Well, near Nablous, Palestine, 1881. '...an important discovery concerning a point of Biblical archaeology and topography...The Illustration is from a drawing by Charles Wright Barclay...[It is the] scene...of Our Lord's interview with the woman of Samaria...you look down, and, amidst confused heaps of earth and stones, you see a dark, irregular opening, barely two feet wide...[It] is marked, to the present day, with grooves made by the ropes by which the water-pots were actually drawn up..."A few feet from the opening we noticed a dark crack, perhaps an inch wide, and, fancying it might be another aperture, we removed several stones and cleared away some earth, when we were able to distinguish part of a curved hole. Interested at finding this, we removed more stones, scraped the earth aside, and soon found a round opening in a large stone; but this was stopped up by an immense block, which had apparently been thrust into it. Calling to aid two men, our united efforts at length succeeded in dislodging it, and the mouth of the well was clear. It is impossible to describe the feelings with which we gazed down the opening that had been so long closed, and felt that we were sitting indeed on that same ledge on which the Saviour rested".' From "Illustrated London News", 1881.