s summit withdrawn from view at that position.
An ancient castle crowns a high peak rising above the village, and which
for grandeur of situation and noble aspect is unsurpassed by any ruin
that I have seen in Syria. Yet how small was all this in comparison with
the mighty mass at its back! I regret the having been unable to examine
this remarkable fortress, the modern name of which is the _Kula'at es
Subeibeh_.

The halt was in an olive plantation, and while the tents were being
raised, I rode forwards to the other celebrated source of the Jordan,
namely, that issuing from the cavern, and drank of its water, but first
had to swim the horse through a strong current.

How beautiful was the evening scene of rocks, trees, blue mountains, and
the extended plain, with the thread of the Hhasbani winding through it on
the western side! There were also herds of cattle coming in, and a
shepherd boy playing his rural pipes. What a scene for Poussin! I
offered to buy the Pandean pipe (of several reeds joined laterally) from
the boy, wishing to have it for my own, obtained at the mythological home
of Pan himself--

"Pan primus calamos cera conjungere plures
Instituit,"

but the lad asked an exorbitant price for it, and strode away.

Then rushed up to make use of the fading twilight for catching at least a
glimpse of the Greek inscriptions and Pan's grotto, from which the river
issues, not in infantile weakness, but boldly striking an echo against
the sides of the natural cavity.

"Great Pan is dead!" as the superstitious peasants of Thessaly said, when
they imagined they heard the echo formed into words, sixteen hundred
years ago; and while musing on the "rise and fall" of the classic
idolatry, a bat flew past me out of the grotto, but I saw no moles for
the old idols to be thrown to, (Isa. ii. 20.)

Pan was the mythological deity presiding over caverns, woods, and
streams, from whom this place received its denomination of Panion or
Paneas in Greek, or Panium in Latin; and the word Paneas becomes Banias
in Arabic, as it is at this day. Here costly temples and altars were
raised, and Herod built a temple in honour of Augustus Caesar. These
edifices have fallen to the ground, the idols have been demolished by
early Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans; but niches with pedestals, on
which the dumb figures stood, accompanied by inscriptions, still remain
in attestation of written history.

Of these inscriptions I