e driven at noon to drink at the
spring.

We returned to Jerusalem on the 21st of October, and on the 28th of
November that village was again a mass of ruin--the houses
demolished--the people dispersed--their newly-sown corn and the vineyards
ploughed over--the fine spring of water choked up once more--and my
Australian trees planted there torn up by the roots. All this was
allowed to be done within nine miles of Jerusalem, to gratify persons
engaged in an intrigue which ended in deeds far worse than this.

Our village was _Faghoor_, and had been one of the ancient towns of the
tribe of Judah. Its place in the Bible is Joshua xv., where it is found
in the Greek Septuagint together with Tekoah, Etham, and Bethlehem, all
noted places--neither of which is contained in the Hebrew text, and
therefore not in the English translation.

It seems difficult to account for this; but it may possibly be that
neither of these towns were ever in the Hebrew of that chapter, that they
were not well known at the time of the original Hebrew being written; but
that when the translation of the Septuagint was made, the writers knew by
other means, though living in Egypt, that Tekoah, Etham, Bethlehem, and
Faghoor had been for a long period famous within the tribe of Judah, and
therefore they filled up what seemed to them a deficiency in the
register.

APPENDIX.

A.--Page 32.

The signs here referred to were guessed by Buckingham (about 1816) to be
possibly some distinctive tokens of Arab tribes; but he seemed rather
inclined to connect them with marks that are found in Indian caverns, or
those on the rocks about Mount Sinai.

He was thus nearer to the truth than the latest of travellers, De Saulcy,
who, with all his knowledge of Semitic alphabets, says of some of these
_graffiti_, or scratchings, at 'Amman, which he copied: "Tout cela, je
regrette fort, est lettre close pour moi. Quelle est cette ecriture? Je
l'ignore." (Voyage en Terre Sainte. Tom. i. p.256. Paris, 1865.)

They are characters adopted by Arabs to distinguish one tribe from
another, and commonly used for branding the camels on the shoulders and
haunches, by which means the animals may be recovered, if straying and
found by Arabs not hostile to the owners.

I have, however, seen them scratched upon walls in many places frequented
by Bedaween, as, for instance, in the ruined convents, churches, etc., on
the plain of the Jordan, and occasionally, as at