.

will allow, we shall take leave to make the book of the accomplished traveller speak for itself. Perhaps it would be impossible to select a district of Palestine around which more mystery gathers and in connexion with which greater scripture "difficulties" occur, than the province of Bashan. It is the land of sacred romance. From the remotest historic period down to our own day, there has ever been something of mystery and of strange wild interest connected with that old kingdom. In the memorable raid of the Arab chiefs of Mesopotamia into eastern and central Palestine, we read that the "Rephaim in AshterothKarnaim" bore the first brunt of the onset. The Rephaim, that is, "the giants," for such is the meaning of the name, men of stature, beside whom the Jewish spies said long afterwards that they were as grasshoppers. These were the aboriginal inhabitants of Bashan, and probably of the greater part of Canaan. Most of them died out, or were exterminated at a very early period; but a few remarkable specimens of the racesuch as Goliath, and Sippai, and Lahmi (1 Chron. xx.)-were the terror of the Israelites and the champions of their foes, as late as the time of David; and, strange to say, traditionary memorials of these primeval giants exist even now in almost every section of Palestine, in the form of graves of enormous dimensions, -as the grave of Abel, near Damascus, thirty feet long; that of Seth, in Anti-Lebanon, about the same size; and that of Noah, in Lebanon, which measures no less than seventy yards! The capital and stronghold of the Rephaim in Bashan was AshterothKarnaim, so called from the goddess

there worshipped, -the mysterious "two-horned Astarte." Now, strange as it may appear, the cities built and occupied some forty centuries ago by these old giants exist even yet. Mr. Porter has traversed their streets, has opened the doors of their houses, and slept peacefully in their long deserted halls. Among the massive ruins of these wonderful cities, lie sculptured images of Astarte, with the crescent moon, which gave her the name Carnaim, upon her brow. Of one of these mutilated statues he took a sketch in the city of Kenath, and in the same place he bought from a shepherd an old coin with the full figure of the goddess stamped upon it.

The conquest of Bashan, begun under the leadership of Moses in person, was completed by Jair, one of the most distinguished chiefs of the tribe of Manasseh. In narrating his achievements, the sacred historian brings out a remarkable fact connected with the kingdom of Bashan. In Argob, one of its little provinces, Jair took no less than sixty great cities, "fenced with high walls, gates and bars; besides unwalled towns a great many "-Deut. iii., 4, 5, 14. Such a statement seems all but incredible. It would not stand the arithmetic of Bishop Colenso for a moment. Often, when reading the passage, Mr. Porter used to think that some strange statistical mystery hung over it. How could a province measuring not more than thirty miles by twenty, support such a number of fortified cities, especially when the greater part of it was a wilderness of rocks? But mysterious, incredible as this seemed, on the spot, with his own eyes, he has seen that it is

literally true. The cities are there to this day. Some of them retain the ancient names recorded in the Bible. The boundaries of Argob are as clearly defined by the hand of nature as those of our own island home. These ancient cities of Bashan contain probably the very oldest specimens of domestic architecture now existing in the world. Now that we have the results of an intrepid traveller's investigations, it seems strange indeed, that one of the most interesting of the provinces of the Holy Land should comparatively have been unknown, although it was regarded by the poet-prophets of Israel as almost an earthly paradise, and was the scene of a few of the most interesting events of New Testament history. The strength and grandeur of its oaks, the beauty of its mountain scenery, the unrivalled luxuriance of its pastures, the fertility of its wide-spreading plains, and the excellence of its cattle,-all supplied the sacred penmen with lofty imagery. Remnants of the oak forests still clothe the mountain-sides; the soil of the plains and the pastures on the downs are rich as of yore, and though the periodic raids of Arab tribes have greatly thinned the flocks and herds as they have desolated the cities, yet such as remain,-the rams, and the lambs, and goats, and bulls,-may be appropriately described in the words of Ezekiel, as "all of them fatlings of Bashan." The travellers, however, who have succeeded in exploring Bashan, scarcely amount to half-a-dozen ; and the state of the country is so unsettled, and many of the people who inhabit it are so hostile to Europeans, and, in fact, to strangers in general, that there seems to be but little pro

spect of an increase of tourists in that region. Yet, the very isolation of Bashan added immensely to the charm and instructiveness of Mr. Porter's visit. Both land and people remain thoroughly Oriental. Nowhere else is patriarchal life so fully or so strikingly exemplified. The social state of the country and the habits of the people are just what they were in the days of Abraham or Job. The raids of the eastern tribes are as frequent and as devastating now as they were then. The flocks of a whole village are often swept away in a single incursion, and the fruits of a whole harvest carried off in a single night. The arms used are, with the exception of a few muskets, similar to those with which Chedorlaomer conquered the Rephaim. The implements of husbandry, too, are as rude and as simple as they were when Isaac cultivated the valley of Gerar. And the hospitality is everywhere as profuse and as genuine as that which Abraham exercised in his tents at Mamre. Our traveller could scarcely get over the feeling, as he rode across the plains of Bashan and climbed the wooded hills through the oak forests, and saw the primitive ploughs and yokes of oxen and goads, and heard the old Bible salutations given by every passer-by, and received the urgent invitations to rest and eat at every village and hamlet; and witnessed the killing of the kid or lamb, and the almost incredible despatch with which it is cooked and served to the guests, he could scarcely get over the feeling, that he had been spirited away back thousands of years, and set down in the land of Nod, or by the patriarch's tents at Beersheba. Common life in Bashan he found to be a

constant enacting of early Bible stories. Away in this old kingdom he met with nothing in dress, language or manners, save the stately and instructive simplicity of patriarchal times.

As the rule, the ancient cities and even the villages of western Palestine have been almost annihilated; with the exception of Jerusalem, Hebron, and two or three others, not one stone has been left upon another. The state of Bashan, however, is totally different: it is literally crowded with towns and large villages, and though the vast majority of them are deserted they are not ruined. Mr. Porter has more than once entered a deserted city in the evening, taken possession of a comfortable house, and spent the night in peace. Many of the houses are perfect, as if only finished yesterday. The walls are sound, the roofs unbroken, the doors and even the window-shutters in their places.

The reason assigned for such remarkable preservation is that the walls of these houses are from five to eight feet thick, and built of large squared blocks of basalt; the roofs are formed of slabs of the same material, hewn like planks, and reaching from wall to wall; the very doors and window-shutters are of stone, hung upon pivots projecting above and below. Some of these ancient cities have from two to five hundred houses still perfect, and yet for more than five centuries there has not been a single inhabitant in one of them. In Salcah, for instance, one of the most remarkable cities in Palestine, as nearly as Mr. Porter could estimate, five hundred of its houses are still standing, and from three to four hnndred families might settle in it at

any moment without laying a stone or expending an hour's labour on repairs. The town has long been deserted. The open doors, the empty houses, the rank grass and weeds, the long straggling brambles in the doorways and windows, formed a strange impressive picture which can never leave the traveller's memory. The view from the castle, on the summit of a steep conical hill which rises to the height of some three hundred feet, is wonderfully interesting. It embraces the whole southern slopes of the mountains, which, though rocky, are covered from bottom to top with artificial terraces and fields divided by stone fences. From their base the plain of Bashan stretches out on the west to Hermon; the plain of Moab on the south, to the horizon; and the plain of Arabia on the east, beyond the range of vision. Wherever the eye turned on this vast panorama towns and villages were to be seen. Bozrah was there on its plain, twelve miles distant. The towers of Bethgamul were faintly visible far away on the horizon. Everywhere on that vast panorama,- -on plain and mountain side, in Bashan, Moab, and Arabia, far as the eye could see and the telescope command, were towns and villages thickly scattered; and all deserted, though not ruined. Many people might have thought, and a few people still believe, that there was a large amount of eastern exaggeration in the language of Moses when describing the conquest of this country 3,000 years ago: "We took all his cities at that time, . . . three score towns, all the region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan. All these cities were fenced with high walls, gates and bars; besides unwalled

towns a great many." No man who has traversed Bashan, or who has climbed the hill of Saleah, will ever again venture to bring such a charge against the sacred historian. The walled cities with their ponderous gates of stone, are there now as they were when the Israelites invaded the land. The great numbers of unwalled towns are there too, standing testimonies to the truth and accuracy of Moses, and monumental protests against the poetical interpretations of modern rationalists. There are the roads once thronged by the teeming population; there are the fields they enclosed and cultivated; there are the terraces they built up; there are the vineyards and orchards they planted; all alike desolate, not poetically or ideally, but literally, "without man and without inhabitant, and without beast." The best, the fullest, the most instructive commentary on the forty-eighth chapter of Jeremiah, that Mr. Porter ever saw, was that inscribed by the finger of God on the panorama spread out around him as he stood on the battlements of the castle of Salcah. It was a sad and solemn scene,-a scene of utter and terrible desolation-the result of sin and folly; and yet he turned away from it with much reluctance. He would gladly have seen more of those old cities and penetrated further into that uninhabited plain. A tempting field lay there for the ecclesiastical antiquarian and the student of sacred history, but the time was not suitable for such a journey, and other duties summoned him away.

From Salcah our traveller journeyed to Kerioth, which was reckoned one of the strongholds of the plain of Moab (Jer. xlviii. 41). Standing

in the midst of wide-spread rock-fields, and encircled by massive ramparts, the remains of which are still there, every traveller can see how applicable is Jeremiah's reference, and how strong this city must once have been. The houses bear the marks of the most remote antiquity; their style points to a period far earlier than the Roman age, and probably antecedent to the conquest of the country by the Israelites. Moses makes special mention of the strong cities of Bashan, and speaks of their high walls and gates. He tells us, too, in the same connection, that Bashan was called the land of the giants or Rephaim, (Deut. iii. 13); leaving us to conclude that the cities were built by giants. Now the houses of Kerioth, and other towns in Bashan, appear to be just such dwellings as a race of giants would build. The walls, the roofs, but especially the ponderous gates, doors, and bars are in every way characteristic of a period when architecture was in its infancy, when giants were masons, and when strength and security were the grand requisites. A door in Kerioth measured nine feet high, four and a half feet wide and ten inches thick. The folding gates of another town in the mountains were still larger and heavier. Time produces little effect on such buildings as these. The heavy stone slabs of the roofs resting on the massive walls make the structure as firm as if built of solid masonry; and the black basalt used is almost as hard as iron.

There can scarcely be a doubt, therefore, that these are the very cities erected and inhabited by the Rephaim, the aboriginal occupants of Bashan, and the language of Ritter appears to be true: "These buildings

remain as eternal witnesses of the conquest of Bashan by Jehovah." Thus, there are at Kerioth and its sister cities some of the most ancient houses of which the world can boast; and in looking at them and wandering among them and passing night after night in them, the traveller's mind was led away back to the time, now nearly 4,000 years ago, when the kings of the east warred with the Rephaim in Ashteroth-Karnaim and with the Emim in the plain of Kiriathaim (Gen. xiv. 5.) Some of the houses in which Mr. Porter slept, were most probably standing at the period of that invasion. How strange to occupy houses of which giants were the architects, and a race of giants the original owners!

The temples and tombs of Upper Egypt are of great interest, as the works of one of the most enlightened nations of antiquity; the palaces of Nineveh are still more interesting, as the memorials of a great city which lay buried for 2,000 years; but the massive houses of Kerioth scarcely yield in interest to either. They are antiquities of another kind. In size they cannot vie with the temples of Karnac ; in splendour they do not approach the palaces of Khorsabad; yet they are the memo rialsof a race of giant war

riors that has been extinct for more than 3,000 years, and of which Og, King of Bashan, was one of the last representatives; and they are, it is believed, the only specimens in the world of the ordinary private dwellings of remote antiquity. The monuments designed by the genius and reared by the wealth of imperial Rome, are fast mouldering to ruin in this land; temples, palaces, tombs, fortresses, are all shattered, or prostrate in the dust; but the simple, massive houses of the Rephaim are in many cases perfect as if only completed yesterday.

Willingly should we have followed Mr. Porter in his rambles through other of these old cities of Bashan, but the facts we have given are amply sufficient to prove how minutely the truth of Holy Scripture is corroborated by the most searching examination of Bible lands: The harmony between the book and the land is complete. No traveller can possibly fail to see it, and no conscientious man can fail to acknowledge it. Some account of Mr. Porter's visit to the land of the Philistines, and the force added to the argument from "prophecy fulfilled," by his researches, we reserve for our next.

congregation. And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him. And the Lord said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp. And all