army in their disastrous attempt upon Kerak: also some of the valiant achievements of his kinsman Gublân; and then proceeding to witticism, gave me his etymological origin of the name of Hhesbân—namely, that, on the subsiding of the great deluge, the first object that Noah perceived was that castle, perched as it is upon a lofty peak; whereupon he exclaimed, Hhus’n bân—“a castle appears!”  I wish I could recollect more of his tales.

After passing through romantic scenery of rocks and evergreen trees, at a sudden turn of the road we came to large flocks and herds drinking, or couched beside a copious stream of water gushing

from near the foot of a rocky hill.  This they called ’Ain Hhesbân; and told us that the Egyptian army above alluded to, twenty thousand in number, passed the night there before arriving at Kerak.  To many of them it was their last night on earth.

There were remains of large masonry lying about, and the scene was truly beautiful—to which the bells of the goats and cows added a charming musical effect.

I asked an Arab, who was bathing in a pool, where he had come from, and he sulkily answered, “From t’other end of the world!”  And I suppose he was right in saying so, for what meaning could he attach to the designation, the world.  He must have meant the world of his own experience, or that of his tribe, or his parents—probably extending to the end of the Dead Sea in one direction, to the Lake of Tiberias in another; to the Mediterranean in the west, and in the east to the wilds unknown beyond the road of the Hhâj pilgrimage.  “From the other end of the world,” quoth he, the companion of a shepherd boy with his flute, at a mountain spring, pitching pebbles at the sheep of his flock to keep them from wandering away over their extent of “the world.”

As we proceeded, there were several other streams issuing from the hills, some of them falling in pretty cascades into thickets of oleander below.  All these meeting together, formed a line

of river flowing between grassy banks—near which we saw considerable remains of water-mills, not of great antiquity.

Next we reached two small forts: the one upon our side the stream they called Shuneh, (the usual name used for that kind of building;) the other was across the water, and they called it Shefa ’Amer.  I should wonder if our guides knew the existence of the town called Shefa ’Amer, near Caiffa.  They told us that both these forts had been erected by Dëâb’s grandfather, but this is incredible.

Near the Shuneh I observed a very large sarcophagus, cut in the solid rock, but not so far finished as to allow of its being removed.  In the court-yard there was nothing remarkable.  There were, however, some ancient rabbeted stones lying near.  Here I may remark, with respect to the sarcophagus, that such things are rare on the east of the Jordan, or anywhere else so far to the south.  There are two lids of such lying on the plain of Sharon, alongside the Jaffa road from Jerusalem; and the next southernmost one that I know of (excepting those at Jerusalem) is an ornamented lid, near Sebustieh, the ancient Samaria; but they abound in Phœnicia.

Forward again we went, higher and higher, with wild flowers in profusion, and birds carolling all around.  Then literally climbing up a mountain side, we came to a cleft in a precipice, which they called El Buaib, (the little gate,) with

unmistakable marks of ancient cuttings about there.  Traversing a fine plain of wheat, we at length reached the ancient city of Heshbon, with its acropolis of temple and castle.

That plain would be fine exercise-ground for the cavalry of Sihon, king of the Amorites.  Fresh, and almost chilly, was the mountain air; but the sky rather cloudy.

How magnificent was the prospect over to Canaan!  We were all persuaded that the Mount of Olives would be visible thence on a fine day; and I have no doubt whatever that the site on which we were standing is that peak—the only peak breaking the regular outline of the Moab mountains which is seen from Jerusalem.

We scattered ourselves about in several groups among pavements and columns of temples, (the most perfect of which are in the Acropolis,) sepulchres, cisterns, and quarries, picking up fragments of pottery, with some pattern work (not highly ornamental, however) upon them, and tesseræ or the cubes of tesselated pavement, such as may be found all over Palestine.  The Bedaween call them muzzateem or muzzameet indifferently.  There were some good Corinthian capitals, fragments of cornices, and portions of semicircular arches, and pieces of walls that had been repaired at different periods.  I entered one rock-hewn sepulchre which contained seven small chambers; six of these had been evidently broken into by

main force, the seventh was still closed.  This was S.W. of the Acropolis.

All the works or ornamentations above ground were of Greek or Roman construction, but we found no inscriptions or coins.  Heshbon must have been at all periods a strong place for defence, but with an unduly large proportion of ornamentation to the small size of the city according to modern ideas.  Before leaving this site, far inferior to ’Ammân, as we found afterwards, I got the Arabs around me upon a rising ground, and, with a compass in hand, wrote down from their dictation the names of sites visible to their sharp eyesight:—

These must have been the places that “stood under the shadow of Heshbon,” (Jer. xlviii. 45.)  One of them at least appears in Joshua xiii. 17, etc., among “the cities that are in the plain of Heshbon.” [17]

In half an hour we came to Ela’âl, (Elealeh,) (Isa. xv. 4 and xvi. 9, and Jer. xlviii. 34.)  Large stones were lying about, and one column standing upright, but without a capital.  Fine corn-plains in every direction around.  Our tents pitched at Na’oor were visible to the E.N.E. through an opening between two hills.  Cool cloudy day; all of us enjoying the ride through wheat-fields, and over large unoccupied plains—my old friend ’Abdu’l ’Azeez still adhering to me as his willing auditor.

On coming up to his