CHAPTER LV.
The Cross and the Winepress.
As I was meditating upon these words or thoughts of Jesus when hanging on the Cross: 'I am pressed like wine placed here under the press for the first time; my blood must continue to flow until water comes, but wine shall no more be made here,' an explanation was given me by means of another vision relating to Calvary.
I saw this rocky country at a period anterior to the Deluge; it was then less wild and less barren than it afterwards became, and was laid out in vineyards and fields.

I saw there the Patriarch Japhet, a majestic dark-complexioned old man, surrounded by immense flocks and herds and a numerous posterity: his children as well as himself had dwellings excavated in the ground, and covered with turf roofs, on which herbs and flowers were growing.

There were vines all around, and a new method of making wine was being tried on Calvary, in the presence of Japhet.

I saw also the ancient method of preparing wine, but I can give only the following description of it.

At first men were satisfied with only eating the grapes; then they pressed them with pestles in hollow stones, and finally in large wooden trenches.