Jearim, the “town of forests,” but this appears to be an unsatisfactory identification for several reasons. The place seems scarcely on the line of the boundary of Judah, as Kirjath Jearim was; it is not a hill with a “high” place, as we should gather Kirjath Jearim to have been from the account of the hill where the ark was kept; and lastly, the important part of the name bears no reference to the ancient title, derived from some mountain covered with thick wild growth which does not exist near the village.

The Crusaders fixed upon Kuriet el ’Anab as being the ancient Anathoth, their reasons being as usual very difficult to understand. They erected a magnificent church over a spring in the valley north of the village, dedicated to Saint Jeremiah of Anathoth, and this structure remains almost intact. On its walls the dim shadows of former frescoed paintings can be traced, and over these the names of pilgrims rudely scrawled like those of the modern tourists. The church is peculiar from the careless manner in which it has been constructed, the walls not being at right angles; thus the east wall is two and a half feet longer than the west, as we found in making the plan.

The village itself consists of stone houses of better appearance than those in the plain, surrounded by beautiful vineyards, the vines trailing over the stone walls like a green cataract flowing to the valley. The place, which derives its name from these vineyards, was once the seat of the famous native family of Abu Ghôsh. The most notorious of its chiefs, a robber, who held all pilgrims to the capital in terror, was killed by the Egyptian Government, pursuing its usual policy of exterminating the great native families; since death he has been canonised, and a Mukâm erected to him near the village. At Easter, the children of the place (which is often called Abu Ghôsh after the family) are to be seen seated along the road offering water in spouted bottles to the pilgrims. This charitable custom is rare in Palestine, though occasionally in use on some of the other pilgrim routes.

The next ascent brought us in sight of a very remarkable village on the right, now called Sôba. It is separated from the ridge on which the road runs by the deep and impassable valley which, for the greater part of its length, forms the northern boundary of Judah. The place struck me much at the time—a high conical hill crowned by a village surrounded by steep rocky ledges with thick growth of wild shrubs mingled with olives. I had afterwards occasion to visit it, and found it to be undoubtedly an ancient site. Not only are there traces of a Crusading fortress, which was called Belmont, but also many ancient Jewish sepulchres cut in rock. The peasantry say it was the palace of the Sultan of the Fenish, and that his daughter lived at a certain ruined convent near the road, which we saw surrounded with ancient trees—the wilderness formed from its original garden.

Since the telegraph line has been laid to Jerusalem, this tradition has been supplemented with the detail that the Fenish had a telegraphic wire from the hill palace to that in the valley. Another favourite abode of the daughter was not far from Latrûn. Again at Beit Jibrîn and at Keratîya we found a cavern, a garden, and a castle of the Fenish; and the fact that this tradition is confined to the district south of the Jerusalem road and on the edge of the hills, leads one to suspect that the Fenish were no other than the Felish or Philistines, for the peasantry almost invariably change their L’s into N’s in this manner.

But to return to Sôba. This fine site, standing out black against the sky, with its grand ravine and wild copses, is evidently an important spot; yet the name Sôba does not recall any Scriptural place, though not far different from the Hebrew Zuph where Saul met Samuel. In modern Arabic it means “a heap,” such as the grain-heaps of the threshing-floors, a title which applies well to the shape of the hill, but probably this is a corruption of some older word.

Sôba also was at one time honoured, like Latrûn, as the ancient Modin, the true site of which was however known to Saint Jerome, east of Lydda, where El Medieh is now found. The distance of El Medieh from Jerusalem is close on that given in the Talmud for Modin, although the tomb supposed by M. Guérin to have been that of the Hasmoneans proves to be of Christian origin.

And now at length we arrived at the top of the ascent, and spurring along under the stony knoll on which the little village of Kŭstŭl—an ancient “castellum” of the Roman conquerors—stands, we fully expected to see Jerusalem. Instead of this we saw before us a huge valley over 1000 feet deep, and beyond it a straight line of hills more lofty and barren than those before passed. We could well picture the disappointment, so graphically described by the old chronicler, of the weary hosts of women and children who toiled footsore and thirsty in rear of the Crusading army, faintly asking, as each height was passed and a new view opened, “Is that Jerusalem?” If to us, well mounted and well fed, the journey was wearisome, what was it to the pilgrims harassed by Saracen skirmishers, and afraid to stop and bury those who fell, lest, as one writer says, a man might be found to be but digging his own grave.

A stony winding road led down to the bottom, a stony winding ascent led up on the other side. Around us were mountains of strikingly wild and barren character, with the dark iron-grey rocks tinged in parts with black and russet and capped by a softer white chalk. The long blue shadows, the large rounded outlines, the hardness and ruggedness of the slopes, combined to produce a scene of wild grandeur more striking than anything yet met except the dark thickets of the Sôba ridge.

The valley beneath is full of grey olive-groves; the white torrent bed is sinuous and winds gradually round west. In the hollow, south of its course, the village of ’Ain Kârim stands on an eminence, and close to it the white convent wall, with its dark cypresses, marks the traditional birthplace of John the Baptist.

The valley is a place famous in Jewish history. It commences north of Jerusalem, and leads down past Lifta (Eleph) to a little village called Kolônia which was on the road beneath us. Thence by ’Ain Kârim southwards to join the Bether valley, and by Kesla it runs down to Zoreah and Eshtaol and widens out into the great corn valley of Sorek, and so past Ekron and Jamnia to the sea. Thus it was one of those passes by which the Philistines were able to penetrate into the heart of the Jewish mountains. It was down this valley that Samuel drove the defeated host from Mizpeh, north of Jerusalem, to Ebenezer, a place probably at the entrance of the hills. In their flight they passed under Bethcar, which is not impossibly the present ’Ain Kârim. Along the stony bed of this great valley at our feet, we may picture to ourselves the nomadic hosts with their mail-clad champions flying before the followers of the prophet, while far away on the white hills the tabernacle would be seen high on the ridge of Mizpeh.

The valley was also once the scene of more peaceful events at the yearly festival of “tabernacles.” Kolônia has near it a ruin called Beit Mizzeh, the ancient Motza or “Spring-head,” a town of Benjamin. The Talmudic doctors tell us that Motza was a colonia or place free from taxes, whence the origin of the modern name, and beside the banks of the stream from the spring-head grew, and still grow, the willows used at the feast. By the restaurant and the ruins of a small monastery, the stream flows under a little bridge; and round its course shady orange-gardens and olive-yards, beneath the village perched on the hillside, often tempt the inhabitants of Jerusalem to come out for an afternoon siesta. It would seem