Saturday afternoon; and we had already resolved to spend our
Sabbath in this wonderful and agreeable place, so remarkable in Scripture
history, and so seldom visited by Europeans.

I climbed up the seats of the theatre, and rested near the top, enjoying
the grand spectacle of luxurious architecture around; then descended, and
walked along its proscenium; but neither reciting passages of Euripides
nor of Terence, as some enthusiasts might indulge themselves in doing,
before an imagined audience of tetrarchs, centurions, or legionaries, or
other

"Romanos rerum dominos, gentemque togatam."

Close to this theatre was a covered and sumptuous building, which I could
not but suppose to be a naumachia, from its having rising rows of seats
around the central space, with a channel leading into this from the
river. As the shadows of evening lengthened, the heat of the day was
moderated, and I sauntered along the bank of the stream till I came to a
large headless statue of a female figure lying in the water. Some men
lifted it upon the green bank for me; but it was far too heavy to be
transported to Jerusalem for the Literary Society's Museum.

The swift-flowing rivulet abounded in fish, some of which the Arabs
killed for us, either by throwing stones or shooting them with bullets,
having no other means of getting at them; but the latter of these methods
was too costly to be often adopted. However, we had some fish for dinner
in "Rabbah, the city of waters." This stream is the commencement of the
Zerka, which we were to meet afterwards, after its course hence N.E. and
then N.W.

I feasted a dozen Arabs at my tent-door. Shaikh 'Abdul 'Azeez laughed
when I remarked that this place was better worth seeing than Heshbon, and
said, "This is a king's city. It was the city of King _Ghedayus_; and
Jerash, which is still more splendid, was built by _Sheddad_, of the
primitive race of the _Beni 'Ad_." Beyond this, of course, it was
impossible for him to imagine anything in matters of antiquity.

In my evening's Scripture reading, I was much struck with the opening of
the 65th Psalm: "Praise waiteth for Thee, O God, in Zion,"--which passes
over all the examples of human achievement elsewhere, in order to
celebrate the peculiar and undying honours of Jerusalem. So now the
Grecian and the Roman colonies, who erected the marvels of architecture
around me, are gone; while the Jewish people, the Hebrew language, the
city of Jeru