better cultivated, and more numerously inhabited, than any part in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. Having travelled about three quarters of an hour in a northwest direction, we came to a casale, or country village, named Colonia, which lay down on our right. Small fields of grain occur in different places; the olive, the vine, and fig-trees abound; and here at least the desert may be said to bud and blossom like the rose. About a quarter of an hour further, and in the same direction, but without any regular track to guide our steps, we arrived, in company with a native of Colonia, at the cave of St. John. It is situated on the edge of a deep rocky ravine, abounding in trees, among which are many of those called locust-trees. * Close by the cave there is a small fountain of fresh water, supplied by a stream from the rock, and the ruins of a small monastery that had been built over the early residence of the messenger of Christ. A small cave, about ten feet square, and the scattered fragments of a small edifice, are all that remain to testify the splendour with which the middle ages decorated this interesting spot. The vicinity of a village, and the cultivation consequent upon it, have taken away much of the desert appearance which it once possessed; for now, a residence in this place would not be any greater banishment from the society of man, than in the neighbourhood of any town or village in Judea.

"From the cave of St. John we descended the hill in an easterly direction; and, having crossed a culti

"The monuments," justly remarks Maundrell, " of the ignorance of the middle times." The tree alluded to, called by Pococke the caroub-tree, by others the carob, or St. John's bread, is the ceratonia siliqua, an evergreen of the order polygamia diæcia. Nothing but the consummate ignorance of the monks could have led to the invention of this legend. Locusts are expressly men tioned as lawful food, Levit. xi. 21, and are still eaten by the Arabs.

vated valley, of a tolerable size for these parts, we arrived in about twenty minutes at the place in the Valley of Turpentine, which is recorded as the scene of conflict between David and Goliath. Nothing can be better described than the ground occupied by the two opposing armies, is in the language of Scripture: 'And Saul and the men of Israel were gathered together, and pitched by the Valley of Elah (Turpentine), and set the battle in array against the Philistines; and the Philistines stood on a mountain on the one side, and Israel stood on a mountain on the other side, and there was a valley between them.' This valley is the Valley of Elah; it is a small valley, and the place of their encampment is pointed out where it narrows into a broad, deep ravine; part of it was in crop, and part of it under the plough, which was drawn by a couple of oxen. A small stream, which had shrunk almost under its stony bed, passes through it from east to west, from which, we are informed, that David chose out five smooth stones, and hasted and ran to meet the haughty champion of Gath. A well of water under the bank, with a few olive-trees above, on the north side of the valley, are said to mark the spot of the shepherd's triumph over his boasting antagonist. Saul and his men probably occupied the side of the valley which is nearest to Jerusalem ; on which the ground is higher and more rugged than on the other side, which was occupied by the Philistines, who, after their defeat, retreated to Ekron; and David brought the head of the Philistine to Jerusalem. From Elah, we returned along a pleasant and picturesque road to the convent of St. John, and thence retraced our steps to Jerusalem, which we entered a little before sun-set."

The uncertainty, however, in which the topography

of Palestine has been involved by the misappropriation of names of places, affords room to doubt every thing that rests on monkish authority. This Vale of Elah, which the Scripture narrative describes as lying between Shochoh and Azekah, Pococke makes to be much further west. To identify the scene, it will only be necessary to ascertain the site of those two ancient towns: Azekah, we know, was between Beth-horon and Bethlehem; and if the former be the same as the modern Bethoor, the Terebinthine Vale, or Valley of Elah, might seem to be correctly placed between Bethoor and Bethlehem.

*

Besides the route generally taken by the pilgrims, by way of Jericho and the Jordan, there is a more direct way to the Dead Sea by way of

SANTA SABA,

WHICH was taken by Dr. Pococke, and which crosses the track from Jericho to Hebron.

"We went," says the learned traveller, "to the south-east,+ along the deep and narrow valley in which the brook Kedron runs : it has high rocky hills on each side, which are shaped into terraces, and doubtless produced formerly both corn and wine; some of them are cultivated even at this time. After travelling about two miles, we passed by a village on a hill to the right called Bethsaon, which is seen also from Bethlehem. This possibly might be the strong castle of Bethsura, mentioned in the history of the Maccabees; ‡ though it is extraordinary that a place of such im

• See Josh. x. 10, 11.

+ This must be inaccurate; and it is not a little remarkable, that this learned and otherwise correct traveller is extremely apt to give erroneous bearings, owing to some fault in the manner of his taking his observations. 2 Macc. xi. 5.

portance, which was only five furlongs from Jerusalem, should be mentioned in no other writings. About six miles from Jerusalem we ascended a hill to the south, from which we had a prospect of Sion, the Mount of Olives, and Bethlehem. We soon came to a ruin called Der Benalbede; which, from the name, seems to have been an old convent. We went about an hour on the hills, and descending a little to the south, came to a lower ground, where we had the first view of St. Saba. Then turning east, in less than a mile we arrived at that convent, which is situated in a very extraordinary manner on the high rocks over the brook Kedron. There are a great number of grottoes about it, supposed to have been the retreats of hermits. The monastic and hermits' life was instituted here in the fourth century by St. Saba. They say that there have been 10,000 recluses here at one time; and some writers affirm that, in St. Saba's time, there were 14,000. The monks of this convent never eat flesh; and they have such privileges, that no Mahommedan can enter the convent, under the penalty of paying 500 dollars to the mosque of the Temple of Solomon. There are some ruins of a building in the way down to the brook Kedron, which probably are remains of the novitiate for breeding up young men to the monastic life, which is mentioned as belonging to the convent. John Damascenus, Euphemius, and Cyril the Monk of Jerusalem, lived in this retirement: which is computed to be equally distant from Jerusa lem, Bethlehem, and the Dead Sea; that is, about three hours from each of them."

There are two other places in the environs of Jerusalem which remain to be noticed: Emmaus, which is within two hours' ride of the city, to the N.W. of Modin, and Hebron, which is five hours to the S.W.

of Bethlehem. The latter was formerly one of the places regularly resorted to by the pilgrims; but so far back as when Dr. Pococke was in Palestine, it was no longer deemed safe to venture in its neighbourhood; it will, however, occur in the route to the Dead Sea. Emmaus, according to Pococke, is now called by the Arabs Coubeby, or Djebeby. It lies about three miles to the W. of Rama, or Ramathaim-Zophim, the town and burial place of Samuel; which still is called Samuele by the Arabs, and contains a mosque erected over the supposed sepulchre of the prophet. To the right of the modern village of Emmaus, on a rising ground, Dr. Pococke observed great ruins of the old town, among which is a church, erected, as the reader will anticipate, on the identical site of the house of Cleophas. But there are here no objects of interest. To the north of Samuele is a very fine valley, probably the Valley of Ajalon, from which rise two hills; that to the west has two summits, on the most northern of which is a village called Geb, perhaps Gibeon.

An annual procession of pilgrims takes place after the celebration of the Greek Easter, to the river Jordan; and many proceed as far as the Dead Sea, performing their ablutions in both. But we shall now lay aside the cockle-shell and pilgrim's weeds, and take a final leave of the environs of the Holy City; as in the tracts of country which it remains to explore, to the west and south of Jerusalem, Quaresmius and Doubdan, Sandys and Chateaubriand, and even our faithful Maundrell and Pococke, can afford us no aid. Our knowledge of a large portion of the ancient kingdom of Judea is almost entirely derived from the enterprising labours of modern English travellers.

Let us cast back one look on the most interesting spot in the world, where once stood the metropolis