conveyed to these as places of general store, rather than to any actual town. Indeed, we saw no vestiges which might lead us to infer that any large settlement existed on the immediate spot, though it may be presumed that there were once dwellers near, for whose convenience these reservoirs were constructed.

We conceived it probable that these aqueducts might have been connected with the fountain which was near to Jericho, the waters of which were sweetened by the Prophet Elisha. The fact of the aqueducts being found here, on the foot of the hills, is sufficient to prove that water was at least so scarce an article as to render expensive and artificial means necessary to its preservation. This, too, would be perfectly consistent with such local details as are left us regarding the country immediately about Jericho.

When Elijah was taken up in a chariot and horses of fire, and carried by a whirlwind to heaven, leaving only his mantle behind him, and when the fifty men of Jericho had sought him on the mountains and high places where they thought he might have dropped, but returned without success to this place, where Elisha himself staid; the Scriptures say, "Now the men of the city said unto Elisha, Behold, I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord

seeth, but the water is nought, and the ground barren."

Josephus, after observing that the Great Plain here is all destitute of water, excepting the river Jordan, says, "notwithstanding which, there is a fountain by Jericho that runs plentifully, and is very fit for watering the ground. It arises near the old city, where Joshua, the son of Nane, the general of the Hebrews, took the first of all the cities of the land of Canaan, by right of war." He then mentions the report of its waters being formerly of such a nature as to destroy every thing over which it ran; but by the virtue of Elisha's throwing into it a little salt, accompanied by a prayer, the pouring out a milk drink-offering, and joining to this the proper operations of his hands, after a skilful manner, the waters became not only sweet and wholesome, but possessed afterwards so fertilizing a quality as to be superior to all others, and to occasion the writer to say, after enumerating the benefits of its stream," that he who should pronounce this place to be divine, would not be mistaken."

At the present moment, even such channels as were evidently those of streams and torrents, were destitute of water, from the long-continued drought that had prevailed; so that we could say nothing regarding the peculiar qualities of any

of the fountains in this neighbourhood; and, probably from the same cause, the plain here, at the foot of the hills, was parched and barren.

We had scarcely quitted the foot of these hills, to go eastward over the plain, before we came upon the ruins of a large settlement, of which sufficient remained to prove it to have been a place of consequence, but no one perfect building existed. Some of the more striking objects among the ruins were several large tumuli, evidently the work of art, and resembling, in size and shape, those of the Greek and Trojan heroes on the plains of Ilium. Near to this was also a large square area, enclosed by long and regular mounds, uniform in their height, breadth, and angle of slope, and seeming to mark the place of enclosing walls now worn into mounds. Besides these, the foundations of other walls in detached pieces, portions of ruined buildings of an indefinable nature, shafts of columns, and a capital of the Corinthian order, were seen scattered about over the widely-extended heaps of this ruined city.

The site of Jericho has been hitherto fixed by all authorities at Rihhah, the village east of this, and nearer to the banks of the Jordan, where it is equally acknowledged, by these same authorities, that no remains are found by which to identify the position. But from the presence of

the ruins described on this spot, and its more accurately agreeing in distance and local position to that assigned to Jericho by Josephus, there is great reason to believe that here, and not at Rihhah, its remains are to be sought for.

In the history of the Jewish war, after the descent of Vespasian from Neapolis to Jericho, where he was joined by one of his commanders named Trajan, the historian thus describes the position of this city. "It is situate in a plain ; but a naked and barren mountain, of a very great length, hangs over it, which extends itself to the land about Scythopolis northward, but as far as the country of Sodom, and the utmost limit of the lake Asphaltites southward. This mountain is all of it very uneven, and uninhabited by reason of its barrenness.” * In another place, when speaking of the city of Jericho, he adds, "This place is 150 furlongs from Jerusalem, and sixty from Jordan. The country, as far as Jerusalem, is desert and stony. But that as far as the lake Asphaltites lies low, though it be equally desert and barren." +

Nothing can more accurately apply, in all its particulars, than this description does to the site of the present ruins, assumed here as those of the ancient Jericho, whether it be in its local

* De Bello. Jud. 1. iv. 8. 2.

Ibid. 1. iv. 8. 3.

position, its boundaries, or in its distance from Jerusalem on the one hand, and from the Jordan on the other. The spot lies at the very foot of the barren hills of Judea, which may be said literally to overhang it on the west; and these mountains are still as barren, as rugged, and as destitute of inhabitants as formerly, throughout their whole range, from the lake of Tiberias to the Dead Sea. The distance, by the computation of our journey in time, amounted to about six hours, or nearly twenty miles; and we were now, according to the reports of our guides, at the distance of two hours, or about six miles from the banks of the Jordan.

From the very low level of the plain in which Jericho is seated, the palm-tree might find sufficient heat to flourish here, while every other part of Judea would be unfavourable to its growth; and the existence of these trees in this valley, at a very early age, was distinguished as such a peculiarity, compared with the incapacity of the other parts of the land to produce them, that Jericho itself was often called, "The city of Palms." In the view of the Promised Land which Moses was permitted to have from the top of Nebo or Pisgah, over against Jericho, "the Lord showed him all the land of Gilead unto Dan, and all Napthali, and the land of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the