materials more easily taken up. It may have been merely of coarse matting, like the walls and roofs of Turkman huts, or it may have been made of boards, or even stone slabs (and such I have seen), that could be quickly removed. All that is necessary, however, for us to know is, that the roof was flat, low, easily reached, and easily opened, so as to let down the couch of the sick man; and all these points are rendered intelligible by an acquaintance with modern houses in the villages of Palestine.

But we must now make our way more to the east, across this Wady Nashif, as I hear it called by the Bedawîn. It runs directly down to the lake on the east side of Tell Hûm, and Khorazy lies over against us in that side valley which joins Wady Nashif directly below us. We may as well walk over these basaltic boulders, and each one take care of himself and horse as best he can. And here we are among the shapeless heaps of Chorazin, which attest most impressively the fulfillment of that prophetic curse of the Son of God. I have scarcely a doubt about the correctness of the identification, although Dr. Robinson rejects it, almost with contempt. But the name, Khorazy, is nearly the Arabic for Chorazin; the situation-two miles north of Tell Hûm-is just where we might expect to find it; the ruins are quite adequate to answer the demands of history; and there is no rival site. I am utterly at a loss, therefore, to discover any other reason for rejecting it, but that its location at this point might seem to favor the claims of Tell Hûm to be Capernaum. To me, however, this is an additional evidence of the correctness of the identification in both cases. But we must leave the discussion of such questions to those who have leisure and learning, and turn down to the southeast over this vast field of black basalt, to visit the equally prostrate Bethsaida. Both fell beneath the same woe, and both have long been lost to the student and traveler. I am still in doubt as to the actual site of Bethsaida. The name is now generally affixed, in maps, to a Tell a short distance up the Jordan, on the east side; but the only ruins of importance are below, along the foot of the hills bordering the

BETHSAIDA-JOSEPHUS-SYLLA.

g

vale of the Jordan, and at its debouchure on the west side. When I was here in 1855, the Bedawîn in the Butaiha applied the name Bethsaida to a bank on the shore of the lake which is distinguished by a few palm-trees, and in some modern maps this site is called Misadiyeh, a derivative from the same root as Bethsaida, both having reference to fishing. Mesady, however, is the name of a site on the rocky hill west of the Jordan, and higher up the gorge. Doubtless the city of Andrew and Peter derived its name from this act and occupation of fishing, and, therefore, it is nearly certain that it was located on the shore, and not several miles from it, at the Tell to which the name is now affixed. Josephus also says that it was at the entrance of the Jordan into the lake.

I call your attention, in passing, to these remains of ancient buildings on the west side of the river, because we shall have occasion to refer to them hereafter. They mark that part of Bethsaida which was, as I suppose, on the west bank of the Jordan, and, of course, in Galilee, while those on theeast belong to that part which Philip repaired and called Julias. We shall come among them after crossing the river, which we might do on the sand-bar along the margin of the lake; but I prefer the ford above, where the bottom is less marshy.

Again we meet the mire-loving buffaloes, and they seem as fond of the mud as the very swine.

They are, and when they can not find a marsh they bathe in pure water. I once ascended Olympus above Brusa, and near the very top, buffaloes were lying in a pool of ice-water, collected from the surrounding snow-banks, and they appeared to enjoy this cold bath as much as these do this black mud. By the way, it was just here that Josephus fought the Romans under Sylla; concerning which battle he says, with his usual vanity, "I would have performed great things that day if a certain fate had not been my hinderance; for the horse on which I rode, and upon whose back I fought, fell into a quagmire, and threw me on the ground, and I was bruised on my wrist, and was carried into a cer

tain village called Caphernome or Capernaum." This paragraph is not only curious in itself, but it confirms the idea that Capernaum was at Tell Hûm, and that it was then only a village. But turn up to the margin of this marsh along the foot of the hill, or you will encounter that certain fate which hindered Josephus from doing great exploits against Sylla. These black spongy places are treacherous to the last degree, as David appears to have found by sad experience; for he speaks of sinking in deep mire to which there was no bottom. It is a curious fact that dry, rocky, and mountainous as this country is, yet it abounds in bogs and quagmires to an extraordinary extent. The rivers of Damascus all subside into vast swamps: the Orontes creeps through them from Ribla to Antioch. The Jordan does. the same from Dan to Tiberias. The Kishon and the Naamany find their way to the Bay of Acre through bottomless marshes, and so does the Zerka or Crocodile River at Cesarea, the Abu Zabûra, the Kanah, the Falej, and the Aujeh, between that city and Jaffa. David was therefore perfectly familiar with these deceitful and dangerous pits, and could speak of them from painful personal experience.

Here we are at the ford, and though the water is not deep, the bottom is rocky, and there down goes the mule, with all our bedding and wardrobe, into the river. This "certain fate," however, is less painful than that of Josephus, and, as the day is clear and warm, we shall be able to sun and dry every thing before night. And now we have. the flowery but rather muddy Butaiha through which to saunter for two hours. Dr. Robinson says correctly that it resembles Gennesaret-the one on the northwest, and the other along the northeast shore of the lake, both well watered and extremely fertile, and also both very unhealthy. The Butaiha has the largest and most permanent brooks, Gennesaret the most numerous and largest fountains. I can confirm the statement of Burkhardt that the Arabs of Butaiha have the earliest cucumbers and melons in all this region. I once visited it in early spring with a guide from Safed, 1 Life, 72d paragraph.

LODGE IN A GARDEN-CITIES OF PHILIP.

11

who came, according to custom, to load his mules with these vegetables for the market in that town. The vines are already up and spreading rapidly, and there comes the gardener with a basket of cucumbers to sell, which, of course, we will purchase for our salad in the evening.

And that is the lodge, I suppose, which Isaiah speaks of; just such a frail, temporary thing suggested that sad complaint of the prophet, The daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers.1

No doubt; but the true point of the comparison will not appear until the crop is over, and the lodge forsaken by the keeper. Then the poles fall down, or lean every which way, and those green boughs with which it is shaded will have been scattered by the wind, leaving only a ragged, sprawling wreck, a most affecting type of utter desolation-"as Sodom, and like unto Gomorrah."

If this is the Julias which Philip built, and named in honor of the daughter of Cæsar, it was certainly no great compliment.

And yet Josephus says he advanced it to the dignity of a city, both by the number of inhabitants it contained and its other grandeur,2 of which grandeur nothing now remains but these heaps of unmeaning rubbish. The fact is that the Jewish historian is not to be trusted in such matters. I have visited all the cities which Philip is said to have built, and there neither is, nor could have been, much of royal magnificence about them. This is a fair specimen;

1 Isaiah i. 8.

2 Ant. xviii. 2, 1.

and, though Sogana and Seleucia were somewhat larger, they could never have been any thing more than agricultural villages. I suppose Philip repaired and enlarged this part of Bethsaida in order to detach it from Galilee, and to secure to himself this rich plain of Butaiha which appertained to it.

As we have leisure enough while sauntering down this flowery plain, I should like to hear some account of this Jaulan above us. It is the Golan of the Hebrews, the Gaulanitis of the Greeks, and yet is almost an utter blank on our maps and in books of travel.

I have repeatedly explored parts of it, and once rode through it lengthwise from Hermon to the Jermuk. With a pleasant party of friends I started from Banias on the morning of February 28th, to visit first the ruins at Seid Yehuda. After examining these interesting remains of antiquity, we ascended the basaltic hills eastward for more than an hour to Sujan, the Sogana of Philip. The surrounding country was once well cultivated, as appears evident from the broken terraces along the sides of the mountain; but at present it is absolutely deserted by all except lawless Bedawîn. The view from Sujan over the Hûleh and the surrounding regions is magnificent, and I imagine that one great attraction of the place was its cool and healthy atmosphere. From Sujan we wandered upward and eastward over vast fields of lava, without road, or even path, for more than an hour, to Skaik, probably the Sacaca mentioned by Ptolemy. It is one of the largest ruins in Gaulanitis, and was better built than most cities of this region. My aneroid marked 2670 feet for the elevation of this site, and we found the air clear, cold, and bracing. Skaik was inhabited until modern times, and celebrated as the general rendezvous and point of departure for caravans to the east and south; and the existing remains of vast cisterns and caravanserais show that ample provision had been made for the accommodation of these large trading companies.

Half an hour south by west from Skaik is a large and very ancient ruin, called Summakah. This word seems to