t the Mount of Olives would be visible thence on a fine day; and I
have no doubt whatever that the site on which we were standing is that
peak--the only peak breaking the regular outline of the Moab mountains
which is seen from Jerusalem.

We scattered ourselves about in several groups among pavements and
columns of temples, (the most perfect of which are in the Acropolis,)
sepulchres, cisterns, and quarries, picking up fragments of pottery, with
some pattern work (not highly ornamental, however) upon them, and
tesserae or the cubes of tesselated pavement, such as may be found all
over Palestine. The Bedaween call them _muzzateem_ or _muzzameet_
indifferently. There were some good Corinthian capitals, fragments of
cornices, and portions of semicircular arches, and pieces of walls that
had been repaired at different periods. I entered one rock-hewn
sepulchre which contained seven small chambers; six of these had been
evidently broken into by main force, the seventh was still closed. This
was S.W. of the Acropolis.

All the works or ornamentations above ground were of Greek or Roman
construction, but we found no inscriptions or coins. Heshbon must have
been at all periods a strong place for defence, but with an unduly large
proportion of ornamentation to the small size of the city according to
modern ideas. Before leaving this site, far inferior to 'Amman, as we
found afterwards, I got the Arabs around me upon a rising ground, and,
with a compass in hand, wrote down from their dictation the names of
sites visible to their sharp eyesight:--

To To
S.S.W. Umm Sheggar. S.E.S. Kustul.
" Neba (Nebo?). S.E. Umm el 'Aamed.
" Main. " Khan em Meshettah.
S. Medeba. " Jawah.
S.E.S. Ekfairat " Kuriet es Sook.
(Kephiroth?).
" Jelool. E. Samek.
" Umm er Rumaneh. E.E.N. Ela'al.
" Zubairah. N. Es-Salt.
" Manjah. (The town not visible.)

These must have been the places that "stood under the shadow of Heshbon,"
(Jer. xlviii. 45.) One of them at least appears in Joshua xiii. 17,
etc., among "the cities that are in the plain of Heshbon." {17}

In half an hour w