e, that these
distances can be covered on horseback in a determinate number of hours,
allowing so many miles to an hour; but Palestine is not so smooth as the
greater part of England, and the ways (one cannot well call them roads)
are not drawn in direct lines; climate also counts for something; and
unforeseen incidents will occur to mar the plans of even those habituated
to the country.

To-day's progress, however, was tolerably plain, though not level, and it
occupied six or seven hours.

In an hour and a half we caught first sight of the lake _Hhooleh_ (the
Semechonitis of Josephus) in the due south, and at this point we entered
upon a district strewn with volcanic basalt, in dark-brown pieces, porous
and rounded at the edges. A peasant directed us forwards to the _Tell el
Kadi_, which at length we reached--an eminence rising from the plain, out
of which issues a river all formed at once, gushing from the hill over a
stony bed. This is one of the heads of the Jordan, and the place is that
of _Dan_, which Josephus erroneously supposed to supply the last syllable
of that river's name.

But beyond all question it is the site of the city Dan known throughout
Scripture history for many ages, and under a variety of circumstances:
among the rest for the forcible invasion of it by a number of colonists
from the tribe of Dan in the south of Palestine, where they found their
allotted district too strait for their possession; and being established
here, they gave the city the name of their patriarchal chief.

That history of their migration reads with peculiar interest and force on
the spot, and strange to say that Tell el Kadi seems to retain their
tribal name, inasmuch as _Tell_ signifies "a hill," and Kadi is but the
Arabic for the Hebrew word _Dan_, "a judge," (Gen. xlix. 16.) It is not
however common, very much the contrary, for names to be transmitted in
this way according to their signification through the lapse of ages--they
are usually perpetuated through their orthography.

The Amorite or Sidonian people living here "at ease" were worshippers of
Baal and Ashtaroth, or Astarte. Suddenly they were assailed by the
Danites, who "smote them with the edge of the sword, and burned their
city with fire;" and the newcomers set up "the graven image, and the
molten image, and the teraphim," which they had stolen on their way
thither over Mount Ephraim, appointing the young Levite, the owner of the
images, to be priest o