and four in height, the
hollow cut out from the body left the thickness of a foot all round it.
No inscription gives any record of the doubtless important personage for
whom it was prepared, and no embellishments even provide a clue to the
period to which it belongs. It stands well-preserved, great in its
simplicity and position.

Villages of _Farah_ and _Salchah_ on our left.

Thence we descended into a glen of blazing white stone, without any
verdure, in which were a diversity of paths, and a petty runlet of water
issuing from the ground, but soon showing only stagnant green pools and
mud, with frogs in abundance, then evaporated altogether. Near this,
Salim was taken with vomiting and purging, and was hardly able to remain
on his horse; the dragoman also fainting and giddy, and the rest
frightened with the terrors of expected cholera. Our guide wanted to
desert us and return home.

The muleteers and luggage had taken another road, but after a time we met
again. Moving on, the ground became a gradual rise, and a stream coming
down it toward us, became clearer as we ascended, and fruit-trees were
rather numerous.

Under some fig-trees the kawwas laid himself down, and we stayed there
three hours with him; water was poured over his head to obviate fever,
and I administered some pills.

During the interval I found some sculptured stones with Hebrew
inscriptions, which I have elsewhere described, and took pains to
decipher the words, but without much result. They were lying in a
ploughed field by the roadside. We were now entering on classic ground
of the Talmudists, and upon a precipice above us, upon wide table-ground,
was the village of _Jish_, the Giscala of Josephus.

When evening brought coolness, we proceeded towards Safed.

A peasant passing us was carrying home his plough upon his shoulder,
except the iron share, which his little daughter, of two or three years
old, carried on her head.

Some of our horses were so stung by flies that the blood flowed to the
stones under their feet as they went along.

There were traces of ancient pavement along the road, and cavern holes in
chalk-rock sides. Then traversing a few miles of dark volcanic stone we
neared a crater in the ground, whose gloomy aspect was fully in keeping
with the destruction which such a phenomenon bespeaks as having
occurred--silent as the death it produced, and void of all pleasurable
features, of wild flowers, or even the thorns of