in form, measuring sixty-two feet by forty-two feet, and facing the cardinal points, and the height is about thirty feet. The external wall is evidently ancient, and has on the northern and western sides a sloping bulwark, like the citadel in Jerusalem. The stones are bevelled, though not so large as those of the tower of Hippicus; yet the architecture is of the same kind, leaving little room for doubt that it is the work of Herod or of the Romans. The walls are nearly ten feet thick, and the interior was formerly divided into a lower and upper story, but the upper arch is gone.

About a quarter of a mile south of the castle are the remains of a church, whose foundations are one hundred and fifty-six feet long and about fifty feet broad. This edifice appears to have been

divided into two parts. The easternmost of these - the proper church, with the remains of columns-was sixty-nine feet in length by forty-six feet broad; the western part, eighty-seven feet long by forty-eight feet broad. These remains, together with those other churches around Kurmul, are, of course, of the Christian era.

It is strange that such a valley, with a noble fountain, a blessing so rare and valuable in this dry and thirsty land, should be left to a few tribes of tent-dwelling Arabs.

To the south-east of Carmel, overhanging the Dead Sea, is the extraordinary ridge terminating in the tremendous rock-cliff of Masada, now called by the Arabs Sebbeh. The Rev. Dr. Wolcott, my former associate in Beirût, was the first in modern times to identify and describe this wonderful rock-castle; and the most accurate pictures of it that I have seen were drawn by his travelling-companion, Mr. Tipping, and appeared in Traill's translation of Josephus. Their visit was made in the winter of 1842, and since then many travellers have been there, including some of Lieutenant Lynch's Exploring Expedition, and members of other similar expeditions. Of those who have attempted to describe this ancient and renowned rockfortress of Masada, no one, except, perhaps, M. de Saulcy, has been so smitten with the spirit of exaggeration as Josephus. You can read his account in the eighth chapter of the seventh book of his Wars. He thus speaks of the approach to it along the path “called the Serpent, as resembling that animal in its narrowness and its perpetual windings, for it is broken off at the prominent preci

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pices of the rock, and returns frequently into itself, and, lengthening again by little and little, hath much ado to proceed forwards, and he that would walk along it must first go on one leg and then on the other; and there is also nothing but destruction in case your foot slip, for on each side there is a vastly deep chasm and precipice, sufficient to quell the courage of everybody by the terror it infuses into the mind."

The historian informs us that Jonathan the high-priest first of all built a fortress on this cliff, and called it Masada; but the great wall around the entire summit, seven furlongs in length, was the work of Herod, who, besides the fortifications, and an immense cistern hewn in the rock for a full supply of water, erected a palace there, with columns, and porticoes, and baths, and sumptuous apartments, and laid up an immense store of arms and provisions, and spent vast sums in preparing it to be a last retreat for himself in case of need. He, however, died elsewhere, and had no occasion for such a stronghold; but not long before the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, a band of robbers, whom Josephus calls Siccarii, seized upon it, and dared to set at defiance the conquerors of the world; and upon its hard and blackened summit was enacted the very last scene in the tragedy of Israel's final overthrow.

After the destruction of Jerusalem, Flavius Silva at length laid siege to Masada, and built a wall to hem in the besieged, which can still be traced quite around the rock, and also the remains of the Roman camp; and when the place was subdued by famine, and the defences were stormed, the people, unable to escape, and maddened by the speech of Eleazar their chief, "embraced their wives, took their children in their arms, and gave the longest parting kisses," and with bitter tears plunged their dripping daggers to their hearts, and laid them all dead in one ghastly funeral pile. They then chose ten men by lot to slay all the rest, and every one laid himself down by his wife and children, and, with his arms around their lifeless bodies, offered his neck to the sword of the executioner. This bloody butchery accomplished, one of the ten killed all the rest, and finally himself. Thus perished nine hundred and sixty men, women, and children-the last great sacrifice on the altar of divine retribution-and only two women and five children survived to tell the

tale. Such tragedies are far more than mere incidents in man's general history. They are the voice of the Almighty One, setting the seal of truth divine to a thousand admonitions and prophetic warnings scattered everywhere through his Holy Word, and, thus regarded, there is no stronger evidence for the divine origin of the Bible than the seven books of the Jewish Wars by Josephus.

Canon Tristram, who visited Masada in 1864, describes the site of the strongest part of the fortification as a flat platform on the summit of a peak, isolated by tremendous chasms on all sides, of an oblong shape, and widest at the southern extremity. The total length of the platform is about six hundred paces, and its width from east to west about two hundred paces. The entire elevation above the level of the Dead Sea, Canon Tristram found to be twenty-two hundred feet, which is much higher than the estimates given by other travellers, or the usual computation, which gives it at from twelve hundred to fifteen hundred feet. The cliffs overhanging the Dead Sea are from one thousand to fifteen hundred feet, and almost perpendicular; and yet, as is well known to residents in this country, so clear is the atmosphere, and so extraordinary its power of conveying sound, that one is able to carry on a conversation with those below.

Besides the main fortifications on the top of the cliff there were several towers erected on projecting rocks, and the whole of the platform was enclosed by a wall along the edge of the precipice, and affording no foothold on the outside of it. "In the centre of the plateau stands an isolated building. It measures eighteen yards from north to south, and sixteen from east to west. The west porch is five yards square, the nave ten and a half yards, with a semicircular apsis, and a circular arched light at each end, and is all very neatly plastered with fine cement and flat pebbles, and fragments of pottery in mosaic patterns. Did we not know that Masada had no history after its capture by Silva, this chapel would certainly have been set down as a Crusading ruin.”

Towards the south end of the plateau are many shapeless ruins that probably indicate the site of Herod's palace, which Josephus. describes in his usual style of exaggeration. Beyond this, southwards, the platform terminates in a tremendous chasm.