any but its literal
signification.

Very early in the morning we started afresh, and took the beach of the
lake towards 'Ain Feshkah.

A great part of the day was spent in clambering our ponies over broken
rocks of a succession of promontories, one following another, where it
seemed that no creatures but goats could make way; the Arabs protesting
all the while that the attempt was hopeless, and besides, that the
distance even over better ground was too great for one day's march.

At length I relinquished the undertaking to reach 'Ain Jidi by that way,
and for that year had no leisure from business to try it from other
directions.

Hhamdan and I sat on a rock in his free open air dominion, discussing
possibilities, and what 'Ain Jidi was like, as well as the "Ladder of
Terabeh," (see p. 334.) At length we rose and turned towards Jerusalem.
I am not sure that I ever saw him again, for not long afterwards he was
drowned in the Jordan while attempting to swim his horse through the
stream at its highest, after assisting in a battle on the side of the
Deab 'Adwan.

XIV. SOBA.

On the crest of a high hill two or three hours west from Jerusalem,
stands the village of Soba, and it has long been imagined to be Modin,
the birth-place and burial-place of the Maccabaean heroes; though I never
heard any reason assigned for that identification, except the
circumstance of the sea being visible from it, and therefore of its being
visible from the sea, which was supposed to tally with the description
given in 1 Macc. xiii., 27-30, of the monuments erected there,--"Simon
also built a monument upon the sepulchre of his father and his brethren,
and raised it aloft to the sight, with hewn stone behind and before.
Moreover, he set up seven pyramids, one against another, for his father,
and his mother, and his four brethren. And in these he made cunning
devices, about the which he set great pillars, and upon the pillars he
made all their armour for a perpetual memory; and by the armour ships
carved, that they might be seen of all that sail on the sea. This is the
sepulchre which he made at Modin, and it standeth yet unto this day."

I never was persuaded that the words implied that ships carved on pillars
at Soba, could be distinguished from the sea, or even that the columns
themselves were visible from ships off the coast; but only this, that the
deliverers of their country from the intolerable yoke of the Syrians,
havin