dations, and was considered as his property. A large house of stone had been erected for himself; and several other houses are also of stone. The name of the village, which signifies "the Sugary," cannot of course be ancient; but tradition knows no other. It existed already in the fifteenth century; and seems to imply the former cultivation of the sugar-cane in the vicinity.'—In one place is a small enclosure of large squared stones, apparently of ancient workmanship. Several marble columns and a Corinthian capital, were also strewed upon the ground. In Sheikh Sa'id's house likewise, many large square stones of former structures have been built in. The place seems to be, without much question, an ancient site; but I am unable to assign to it any scriptural name with even a tolerable degree of probability. From Sukkarîyeh, Tell-es Sâfieh bore N. 27° E.

We were delayed here for half an hour, in procuring a guide for el-Kubeibeh and Beit Jibrîn. We found great difficulty, for the first time, in persuading any one to accompany us for money; although many persons were lounging about the village without occupation. Indeed, we had finally to appeal to the Sheikh, and obtained a man only by his order. The obstacle seemed, in this case, to be sheer indolence; the men were too lazy to take the trouble even to earn money so easily.

Starting again at ten minutes before 10 o'clock,

1) F. Fabri and Breydenbach with their party, in travelling from Hebron to Gaza in A. D. 1483, spent the night at a Khân in the plain near a village called Zuckaria (Sukkariyeh). See F. Fabri in Reissb. des h. Landes p. 289. Breydenbach also speaks of the Khân, but gives no name; ibid. p. 186. They probably travelled the usual road by Beit Jibrîn; of which VOL. II.

place however neither makes any mention. Sukkariyeh is also mentioned by Mejr ed-Dîn in 1495; Fundgr. des Orients II. p. 142.

2) Es-Sukkariyeh is about 2 hours W. S. W. of Beit Jibrîn. If the latter be taken as Eleutheropolis, then this distance (but not the direction) would correspond well enough with the position of Lachish. See pp. 388, 389, above. 50

we took the road to el-Kubeibeh. Just out of the village of Sukkarîyeh we passed the large public well, where a camel was drawing water by a Sâkieh; while large flocks and herds were waiting around. Our course was about E. by N. The country soon became more hilly, and rocks began occasionally to appear. The crops of grain were however good. In one field, as we approached Kubeibeh, nearly two hundred reapers and gleaners were at work; the latter being nearly as numerous as the former. A few were taking their refreshment, and offered us some of their parched corn." In the season of harvest, the grains of wheat, not yet fully dry and hard, are roasted in a pan or on an iron plate, and constitute a very palatable article of food; this is eaten along with bread, or instead of it. Indeed, the use of it is so common at this season among the labouring classes, that this parched wheat is sold in the markets; and it was among our list of articles to be purchased at Hebron, for our further journey to Wady Mûsa. The Arabs, it was said, prefer it to rice; but this we did not find to be the case. The whole scene of the reapers and gleaners, and their "parched corn," gave us a lively representation of the story of Ruth and the ancient harvest-home in the fields of Boaz.'

We passed el-Kubeibeh at twenty minutes past 11 o'clock, situated on a stony barren hill ten minutes on our right. It is another village built up by the gov ernor of Gaza on former foundations; but there seemed to be nothing to mark it particularly as an ancient site. Our course now lay more to the left, N. E. over

1) Ruth ii. 8, “Then said Boaz unto Ruth,-Go not to glean in another field, neither go from hence, but abide here fast by my maidens." Verse 14, "And she sat beside the reapers; and he

reached her parched corn, and she did eat, and was sufficed, and left.” Of the vinegar mentioned in the same verse we heard nothing. See the whole chapter.

the low hills to Beit Jibrîn; which place we reached at half past twelve, descending into the southern valley from the Southwest. We spread our carpets under the same olive-tree as on our former visit; and after a lunch laid ourselves down to enjoy a short siesta.

On awaking, we found ourselves surrounded by a divân of people, to the number of a dozen or more, who seemed to consider themselves quite at home in our company. They proved to be men from Beit Jâla, friends and neighbours of our guide, who had come down to hire themselves out during the harvest in the plain; their own harvest in the mountains being two or three weeks later. There were said to be few places of importance in the plain, where some of the men of Beit Jâla were not now to be found; a fact which speaks well for their industrious habits. They all gathered around us, and accompanied us wherever we went. The Sheikh of the village was now at home, and came to us. He was an intelligent man, and of his own accord proposed to show us several antiquities in the vicinity, which we had omitted to see on our former visit. Mounting his sleek mare, mare, and accompanied by several men of the village, and by the whole posse of our friends from Beit Jâla, he led the way to several places of no little interest, which certainly deserve the further attention of travellers and antiquarians.

We went first to some caverns on the S. W. side of the Wady leading up to Santa Hanneh, near the path by which we had approached from Kubeibeh. These are artificial excavations, having partly the character of those we had seen near Deir Dubbân, but of much more careful workmanship. Besides domes, there are here also long arched rooms, with the walls in general cut quite smooth. One of these was nearly a hundred feet in length; having along its

sides, about ten feet above the level of the floor, a line of ornamental work like a sort of cornice.

On

one side, lower down, were two niches at some distance apart, which seemed once to have had images standing in them; but the stone was too much decayed to determine with certainty. These apartments are all lighted by openings from above. In one smaller room, not lighted, there was at one corner what looked like a sarcophagus hollowed out of the same rock; but it was too much broken away to enable us to speak positively. The entrance to the whole range of caverns, is by a broad arched passage of some elevation; and we were surprised at the taste and skill displayed in the workmanship.

The Sheikh now took us across the same valley to other clusters of caverns in the northern hill; more extensive indeed than the former, occupying in part the bowels of the whole hill; but less important and far less carefully wrought. These consist chiefly of bell-shaped domes lighted from above, like those at Deir Dubbân; though some are merely high arched chambers excavated in the face of the rock, and open to the day. The rock is here softer, and very many of the domes are broken down. The Sheikh related, that one chamber before unknown having recently fallen in, he thinking there might be treasure in it, sent down a man to explore it; but he found only a human skeleton. In one of these caverns was a small fountain; and near by were two short inscriptions in very old Cufic, which my companion copied. They seem however to have been the work of casual visitors; and afford no explanation of the age or object of the excavations.1

We now struck down to the church of Santa Hanneh, passing on the way the well already described as 1) See Note XXXI, end of the Volume.

lying N. E. of the ruin.' On inquiring of the Sheikh, whether there was any living fountain in the vicinity, he said that according to their tradition, the well in the valley half-way towards the town, was once a fountain, whose waters overflowed and ran along the valley; but in order to obtain more, they dug it deeper and walled it up; so that the water now no longer rises to the top. It is called Um Judei'a. This circumstance, as we shall see, is of some historical importance.

We next bent our course towards the Tell on the South of the valley, where from the accounts of the Arabs there seemed to be a prospect of finding ruins. At its foot, just out of the valley, we passed several excavated tombs. I entered one, descending by a few steps; and found it to be about fifty feet long by fifteen or twenty broad, with deep niches on each side and at the end for dead bodies. The others were similar externally. The Tell itself, consisting of chalky limestone, is rather a striking object in this part of the country,—a truncated cone with a flat circular plateau on the top, some six hundred feet in diameter. On this plat are no traces of foundations, except a few on the S. W. part. But towards the S. E. and especially on a lower plateau or projection of the hill on that side, there are many foundations of walls and buildings; yet no hewn stones, nor any remains of the superstructures. There would seem to have been here an ancient site; the materials of whose buildings may perhaps have been absorbed in the later erections of Beit Jibrîn.

But the most remarkable spot of all remained yet to be visited. This was another series of immense excavations on the southern end of the same hill, below the traces of foundations just described. Lighting 2) Page 357.

1) Page 358.