built, after the name of Shemer, owner of the hill, Samaria.'

"From this time it was the capital of the revolted tribes. It had the winter house, and the summer house, and the houses of ivory. The wicked Ahab erected upon this hill an altar to Baal; in this plain Benhadad king of Assyria was routed; in the gate of this city sat the king of Israel and the king of Judah, each in his robes, and upon a throne, when the false prophets delivered their ambiguous prediction, and Micaiah declared the word of the Lord; in that pool the dogs licked the blood of Ahab, as they had formerly licked the blood of Naboth his enemy; up that ascent have often toiled the prophets Elijah and Elisha, bearing messages of wrath from the Most High: within these walls there has been a great famine, so that 'an ass's head sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and a woman boiled her own son and did eat him' it was from hence that the host of the Syrians fled, because the Lord made them to hear a noise of chariots and a noise of horses, leaving the camp, as it was, a prey to the famished Samaritans: it was here that Jehu slew the worshippers of Baal, and brake down their images: it was, after enduring a siege of three years in this capital, that Hoshea, the last of its kings, was carried away captive by the king of Assyria: it contained the royal sepulchres of Israel: the gospel was here preached by Philip, and confirmed by Peter and John, to whom Simon, the sorcerer, offered money, that he might receive the Holy Ghost: and it suffered in common with its more guilty rival, when Palestine was subdued by the Roman power."-HARDY's Notices of the Holy Land, pp. 223, 224.

"This ancient city, the later capital of the kingdom of the ten tribes, was built by Omri, king of Israel, about 925 B. C., after he had purchased the hill from Shemer, its owner, from whom the city took its name. site of this capital was, therefore, a chosen one; and it

R

The

would be difficult to find, in all Palestine, a situation of equal strength, fertility, and beauty combined... It continued to be the capital of Israel for two centuries; and, until the carrying away of the ten tribes by Shalmaneser, under king Hoshea, about 720 B. C. During all this time it was the seat of idolatry; and is often denounced by the prophets, sometimes in connexion with Jerusalem. Here, too, was the scene of many of the acts of the prophets Elijah and Elisha, connected with the various famines in the land, the unexpected plenty in Samaria, and the various deliverances of the city from the Syrians.

"After the carrying away of the ten tribes, Samaria appears to have continued, for a time at least, as the chief city of the foreigners brought into their place; though Sichem soon became the capital of the Samaritans, as a religious sect. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish whether, under the name Samaria, the city or the region is meant

66

(The Roman emperor) Augustus bestowed Samaria on Herod the Great, who ultimately rebuilt the city with great magnificence and strength, and gave it the name Sebaste, in honour of Augustus. Here he placed a colony of six thousand persons, composed partly of veteran soldiers, and partly of people from the country round about; enlarged the circumference of the city, and erected around it a strong wall, twenty stadia in circuit. In the midst of the city he left a sacred place, of a furlong and a half, splendidly decorated; and here he erected a temple in honour of Augustus, which was celebrated for its magnitude and beauty. The whole city was greatly ornamented, and became a strong forSuch was apparently the Samaria of the New

tress.

1

1 That the colonnade now seen along the southern side of the hill was connected with this temple, although not in itself improbable, is yet more perhaps than we are warranted certainly to

affirm.

Testament, where Philip preached the gospel, and a church was gathered by the Apostles

"At what time the splendid city of Herod was laid in ruins, we are nowhere informed; but all the notices of the fourth century, and later, would rather lead us to infer that the destruction had already taken place before that early period.

"The fine swelling hill, or almost mountain, of Samaria, stands alone in the midst of a broad noble basin, surrounded by higher mountains on every side... The mountains and the vallies around are to a great extent arable, and enlivened by many villages and the hand of cultivation. From all these circumstances, the situation of the ancient Samaria is one of great beauty. The hill itself is cultivated to the top, and, at about midway of the ascent, is surrounded by a narrow terrace of level land, like a belt, below which the roots of the hill spread off more gradually into the vallies. Higher up, too, are the marks of slighter terraces, once occupied, perhaps, by the streets of the ancient city... The village lies on the level belt just described, on the east side, seventy feet or more above the road. We ascended to it by a very steep and winding path, among ancient foundations, arches, walls, and the like. village is modern; the houses are tolerably built of stones from the ancient remains. The inhabitants have the reputation of being restless and turbulent ; and our friends who had passed this way a few weeks before, with ladies in their company, had met with incivility, and found difficulty in examining the church. We therefore, on entering the village, took care to show off our old guns and pistols to the best advantage, in order to inspire the people with due respect for our strength; and either from this circumstance, or more probably because our party contained only men, we encountered here only the same ready civility which we had ever met with elsewhere.

The

"The first object which presents itself, and at the

same time the most conspicuous ruin of the place, is the church dedicated to St. John the Baptist, (erected at the period of the crusades,) over the spot, where a tradition of long standing has fixed the place of his burial, if not of his martyrdom. The eastern end is quite entire, and arrests the attention of the traveller long before he reaches Sebustieh ... Under a wely in the enclosure of the church, is the reputed sepulchre of John the Baptist ... a little chamber excavated deep in the rock, to which the descent is by twenty-one steps. In progress of time tradition has confounded the sepulchre of this saint with his prison and place of execution; and this vault is now, and has been for centuries, shown also as the latter. Yet Josephus relates expressly, that John was beheaded in the castle of Macharus, on the east of the Dead Sea... (and) it is hardly probable that the disciples of John, who came and took up the body and buried it,"1 first transported it all the way to Samaria ... The village itself presents no other ruin of importance, unless it be a square tower adjacent to the church on the south, the bottom of which is surmounted by a mass of sloping work. Many fragments of ancient columns and sculpture are also built into the modern dwellings. We now ascended the hill towards the west, and came soon to the threshing-floors of the village. They were still in full operation, although the harvest seemed to be chiefly gathered in. Here we first fell in with the sled or sledge, as used for threshing. It consists chiefly of two planks, fastened together side by side, and bent upwards in front, precisely like the common stonesledge of New England, though less heavy. Many holes are bored in the bottom underneath, and into these are fixed sharp fragments of hard stone. The machine is dragged by the oxen as they are driven round upon the grain; sometimes a man or boy sits upon it; but we did not see it otherwise loaded. The 1 Matt. xiv. 12.

effect of it is to cut up the straw quite fine. We afterwards saw this instrument frequently in the north of Palestine. The whole hill of Sebŭstieh consists of fertile soil; it is now cultivated to the top, and has upon it many olive and fig-trees. The ground has been ploughed for centuries, and hence it is now in vain to look here for the foundations and stones of the ancient city. They have been either employed in the constructions of the later village, or removed from the soil, in order to admit the plough, or have been covered over by the long course of tillage. Yet on approaching the summit, we came suddenly upon an area, once surrounded by limestone columns, of which fifteen are still standing and two prostrate. They measured seven feet nine inches in circumference. How many more have been broken up and carried away no one can tell. We could not distinguish the order of their architecture; nor is there any trace of foundations about which might afford a clue to the nature of the edifice.

"Phocas and Brocardus describe the top of the hill as occupied in their day by a Greek church and monastery; and these columns may possibly have been connected by the former. Yet they certainly have much more the appearance of having once belonged to a heathen temple.

"The view from the summit of the hill presents a splendid panorama of the fertile basin and the mountains around, teeming with large villages, and includes also a long extent of the Mediterranean... Descending the hill on the W. S. W. we came to the very remarkable colonnade, which once ran from this point along the belt of level ground on the south side of the hill, apparently quite around to the site of the present village. It begins at a mass of ruins on this quarter of the hill, which may have been a temple, or more probably an arch of triumph, or something of the kind, looking out W.N.W. over the green valley and towards the sea, forming apparently the entrance of the city on