ed out
of the rock.**

* This is the form of plough still employed by the Syrians
in some places.

** Monuments of this kind are encountered at every step in
Judaea, but it is very difficult to date them. The aqueduct
of Siloam, which goes back perhaps to the time of Hezekiah.

Fields of wheat and barley extended along the flats of the valleys,
broken in upon here and there by orchards, in which the white and pink
almond, the apple, the fig, the pomegranate, and the olive flourished
side by side.

[Illustration: 192.jpg AMPHITHEATRE OF HILLS]

Drawn by Boudier, from a plate in Chesney.

Jerusalem, possibly in part to be attributed to the reign of Solomon,
are the only instances to which anything like a certain date may be
assigned. But these are long posterior to the XVIIIth dynasty. Good
judges, however, attribute some of these monuments to a very distant
period: the masonry of the wells of Beersheba is very ancient, if not as
it is at present, at least as it was when it was repaired in the time of
the Caesars; the olive and wine presses hewn in the rock do not all date
back to the Roman empire, but many belong to a still earlier period, and
modern descriptions correspond with what we know of such presses from
the Bible.

If the slopes of the valley rose too precipitously for cultivation,
stone dykes were employed to collect the falling earth, and thus to
transform the sides of the hills into a series of terraces rising one
above the other. Here the vines, planted in lines or in trellises,
blended their clusters with the fruits of the orchard-trees. It was,
indeed, a land of milk and honey, and its topographical nomenclature in
the Egyptian geographical lists reflects as in a mirror the agricultural
pursuits of its ancient inhabitants: one village, for instance, is
called Aubila, "the meadow;" while others bear such names as Ganutu,
"the gardens;" Magraphut, "the mounds;" and Karman, "the vineyard." The
further we proceed towards the north, we find, with a diminishing
aridity, the hillsides covered with richer crops, and the valleys decked
out with a more luxuriant and warmly coloured vegetation. Shechem lies
in an actual amphitheatre of verdure, which is irrigated by countless
unfailing streams; rushing brooks babble on every side, and the vapour
given off by them morning and evening covers the entire landscape with
a luminous haze, where the outline of each object becomes blurre