wandering over it.  The people are a dark Arab tribe, and live in tents and miserable clay huts.  Where the valley begins to slope upward towards the hills, they plant wheat, barley, and lentils.  The soil is the fattest brown loam, and the harvests are wonderfully rich.  I saw many tracts of wheat, from half a mile to a mile in extent, which would average forty bushels to the acre.  Yet the ground is never manured, and the Arab plough scratches up but a few inches of the surface.  What a paradise might be made of this country, were it in better hands!

The second spring is not quite so large as Ain el-Mellaha but, like it, pours out a strong stream from a single source The pool was filled with women, washing the heavy fleeces of their sheep, and beating the dirt out of their striped camel’s hair abas with long poles.  We left it, and entered on a slope of stony ground, forming the head of the valley.  The view extended southward, to the mountains closing the northern cove of the Sea of Galilee.  It was a grand, rich landscape—­so rich that its desolation seems forced and unnatural.  High on the summit of a mountain to the west, the ruins of a large Crusader fortress looked down upon us.  The soil, which slowly climbs upward through a long valley between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, is cut with deep ravines.  The path is very difficult to find; and while we were riding forward at random, looking in all directions for our baggage mules, we started up a beautiful gazelle.  At last, about noon, hot, hungry, and thirsty, we reached a swift stream, roaring at the bottom of a deep ravine, through a bed of gorgeous foliage.  The odor of the wild grape-blossoms, which came up to us, as we rode along the edge, was overpowering in its sweetness.  An old bridge of two arches crossed the stream.  There was a pile of rocks against the central pier, and there we sat and took breakfast in the shade of the maples, while the cold green waters foamed at our feet.  By all the Naiads and Tritons, what a joy there is in beholding a running stream!  The rivers of Lebanon are miracles to me, after my knowledge of the Desert.  A company of Arabs, seven in all, were gathered under the bridge; and, from a flute which one of them blew, I judged they were taking a pastoral holiday.  We kept our pistols beside us; for we did not like their looks.  Before leaving, they told us that the country was full of robbers, and advised us to be on the lookout.  We rode more carefully, after this, and kept with our baggage on reaching it, An hour after leaving the bridge, we came to a large circular, or rather annular mound, overgrown with knee-deep grass and clumps of oak-trees.  A large stream, of a bright blue color, gushed down the north side, and after half embracing the mound swept off across the meadows to the Waters of Merom.  There could be no doubt that this was Tell el-Kadi, the site of Dan, the most northern town of ancient Israel.  The mound on which it was built is the crater of an extinct volcano.  The Hebrew word Dan signifies “judge,” and Tell el-Kadi, in Arabic, is “The Hill of the Judge.”