camp at Tibnin, whose fine large castle has been the chief feature of the landscape for some two hours before we arrive. The castle was founded by Hugh de St. Omer, Count of Tiberias, about 1104.

The second day's ride brings us to Safed, one of the four sacred cities of the Jews, occupying a conspicuous position ou the summit and slopes of a lofty mountain, and supposed to be the place referred to when our Lord said, "A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid" (Matt. v, 14). To-day it contains about 15,000 inhabitants-9000 Jews, 6000 Moslems, and a few Christians. Like many other towns of Palestine, it is filthy beyond description. It was almost entirely destroyed by the great earthquake of 1837, when great numbers of the inhabitants perished. Baldwin III fled here after his defeat in 1157, and Saladin captured it after the battle of Hattin in 1187.

We now reach Tiberias. It has a population of about 6000, of whom 4000 are Jews, 300 Christians, and the rest Moslems, and is one of the four sacred cities of the Jews in Palestine. The earlier city of Tiberias was spoken of by Joshua (xix, 35) under the name of Rakkath. The Roman city was built by Herod Antipas, and dedicated by him to the Emperor Tiberias (A.D. 16). After the battle of Hattin, 1187, Tiberias fell into the hands of Saladin.

The Hammam or hot baths (temperature 144° F.) are to the south of the city, and are visited by people from all parts of the country. They occupy the site of Hammath, spoken of by Joshua (xix, 35) and by Pliny. Our Lord never entered Tiberias, as, according to early tradition, it was built on an ancient cemetery.

We now proceed round the foot of the lake, and up the gorge of the Yarmuk, from Tiberias to Deraa. Following the caravan road down the western side of the lake we come to an old ruined bridge over the Jordan, about a mile south of where it flows out of the Sea of Galilee, and ford the river on horseback; and after crossing the railway from Haifa to Deraa and Damascus at the station of Semakh, we follow the railway up the gorge of the River Yarmuk to the hot springs of Amatha. These springs are eight in number, some of them several miles up the valley, but the principal ones are close to a place called El Hamma. Their temperatures are 115°, 103°, 92° and 83° F. respectively. The principal spring is in a basin about 40 feet in

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circumference and 5 feet deep. The water is so hot that the hand cannot be kept in it for any length of time, and is considered by the Arabs to be a sovereign cure for many disorders. Herod is supposed to have come here to be cured, and the Baths of Amatha were considered by the Romans as second only to those of Baiæ, and were much extolled by Eusebius and other ancient writers.

From the hot springs we climb up by a very steep pathway by the side of the gorge to Gadara, occupying a magnificent site on the western promontory of the plateau overlooking the Lake of Tiberias. Captured by Antiochus the Great, 218 B.C., it was, twenty years afterwards, taken from the Syrians by Alexander Jannæus after a siege of ten months. The Jews retained possession of it for some time, but, the city having been destroyed during their civil wars, it was rebuilt by Pompey to gratify the desire of one of his freedmen, who was a Gadarene. It was surrendered to Vespasian in the Jewish war. It was one of the most important cities east of the Jordan and called by Josephus the capital of Peræa, and was subsequently the seat of the bishopric Palestina Secunda.

The ruins of the two open-air theatres still exist, one with a full view of the Lake of Galilee in the distance below. There are enormous quantities of tombs everywhere, by which the neighbourhood is honeycombed, many of these having massive basalt doors which still swing on their hinges. More than 200 stone sarcophagi have been taken out of these tombs, and now lie scattered among the ruins of the city.

At Beit er-Ras we come on very extensive ruins-arches of great size, columns, Corinthian and Ionic capitals, chiefly composed of basalt; a vast subterranean ruin, with several fine arches underground. Inscriptions, chiefly Nabathean, are to be found among the ruins. This was a city of great importance in the Roman Empire, and has been identified with Capitolias, one of the cities of the Decapolis.

We now reach Deraa or Dera'a (old Edrei), which to-day is a junction where passengers dine on the railway journey to Damascus ; it is a remarkable place, for at least four cities exist here one above another. The present Arab buildings are on the top of a Græco-Roman city, and this again stands on the remains of one still older, in which bevelled stones are used. Beneath this again is a troglodyte city entirely excavated in the rock on which the upper cities stand, the subterranean

residence of King Og. The following passages of Scripture

refer to Edrei :

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"Og, the King of Bashan, went out against them, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei" (Num. xxi, 33). Moses after he had smitten Og the King of Bashan which dwelt in Ashtaroth at Edrei" (Deut. i, 4). "Salecah and Edrei, cities of the Kingdom of Og" (Deut. iii, 10).

The most prominent of the ruins, covering a circuit of two miles, are those of a large reservoir of Roman times, fed by a great aqueduct. There is a building, 44 by 31 yards, with a double colonnade, evidently a Christian cathedral but now a mosque. The most notable remains, however, are the caves beneath the citadel. They form a subterranean city, a labyrinth of streets with shops and houses, and a market-place. This probably dates in its present elaborate form from Greek times, but such refuges must always have been the feature of a land so swept by Arab tribes. The Crusaders who besieged it called it Adratum (Encyclopædia Biblica).

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Merril writes: When King Baldwin III (1144–1162) and his Crusaders made their wild chase to Bozrah, they went by way of Dra'a. The weather was hot, and the army was suffering terribly for want of water, but as often as they let down their buckets by means of ropes into the cisterns, men concealed on the inside of the cisterns would cut the ropes and thus defeat their efforts." Probably the underground city has connection with all the important cisterns of the place.

From Edrei we travel to Jerash, or Gerasa, which is a city of stupendous ruins, second only to Palmyra in size and importance, and second only to Baalbec in beauty of architecture. In many respects it surpasses them both, and as a perfect specimen of an ancient Grecian city it has no equal. These ruins, says Dr. Tristran, " in number, in beauty of situation and in isolation, were by far the most striking and interesting I had yet seen in Syria." The later name, Philadelphia, was given to the city by Ptolemy II (Philadelphus), King of Egypt, who rebuilt the city in the third century B.C. Greek immigration flowed into Syria after the conquest of Alexander the Great. The Greeks gradually extended beyond Jordan, sometimes occupying the old sites and sometimes building new cities, as at Jerash.

According to Pliny, Gerasa was one of the original ten cities of the Decapolis. It is mentioned by Ptolemy, Strabo, Pliny

and other Greek and Roman writers, but no details are given of its history. We are informed that it was noted for its men of learning, and that it was the "Alexandria of Decapolis." It does not seem to correspond to any Old Testament site. The Crusaders made a campaign against it, in trying to form an eastern frontier for the Holy Land.

Exactly how or when the city was destroyed is not known. After going down in the Mohammedan invasion, it was probably left deserted for hundreds of years, because the state of the ruins after seven hundred years points clearly to the action of an earthquake and not the hand of man. An Arabian geographer, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, describes Gerasa as deserted. Hence we have here a Greek or Roman town standing as it was left seven hundred, if not twelve hundred, years ago.

High above the Peribolos or Forum, on a rocky knoll, supported and surrounded by a massive substructure, stands the ruin of a great temple, whose superb situation commands the whole town and looks straight north along the colonnaded street. The walls of this temple are 71⁄2 feet thick.

Outside the city, says Dr. Green, there are the remains of a naumachia or theatre, for the representation of naval spectacles, consisting of a vast stone reservoir 700 feet by 300 feet, surrounded by tiers of seats and supplied by conduits.

Not very far off is the site of the great and important city of Rabbath-Ammon, the ancient capital of the Ammonites, who, with the Moabites, are said to have been descended from Lot. These two nations drove out the gigantic aboriginal inhabitants east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan. Rabbath-Ammon is first mentioned in Deut. iii, 11, as the place where the "iron bedstead" of the giant King of Bashan was deposited; but it is celebrated chiefly for the siege against it by the Israelites under Joab, when Uriah the Hittite was slain-the blackest spot in David's history.

There are the ruins of a theatre in good preservation, with forty-eight tiers of seats calculated to hold 6000 people, and so admirably arranged that, as may be tested to this day, ordinary conversation on the stage could be distinctly heard on the topmost semicircle.

Joab first took "the city of the waters "-that is, evidently, the lower town, along the banks of the river. But the citadel still held out, therefore messengers were sent to David asking