[Footnote 1:  This is the estimate of Captain Lynch (in Ritter, Erdkunde xv., 1st part, p. 20.) It nearly agrees with that of M. de Bertou (Bulletin de la Soc. de Geogr., 2d series, xii., p. 146.)]

[Footnote 2:  The depression of the Dead Sea is twice as much.]

[Footnote 3:  B.J., III. x. 7 and 8.]

Dangerous countryman!  Jesus has been fatal to the country which had the formidable honor of bearing him.  Having become a universal object of love or of hate, coveted by two rival fanaticisms, Galilee, as the price of its glory, has been changed to a desert.  But who would say that Jesus would have been happier, if he had lived obscure in his village to the full age of man?  And who would think of these ungrateful Nazarenes, if one of them had not, at the risk of compromising the future of their town, recognized his Father, and proclaimed himself the Son of God?

Four or five large villages, situated at half an hour’s journey from one another, formed the little world of Jesus at the time of which we speak.  He appears never to have visited Tiberias, a city inhabited for most part by Pagans, and the habitual residence of Antipas.[1] Sometimes, however, he wandered from his favorite region.  He went by boat to the eastern shore, to Gergesa, for instance.[2] Toward the north we see him at Paneas or Caesarea Philippi,[3] at the foot of Mount Hermon.  Lastly, he journeyed once in the direction of Tyre and Sidon,[4] a country which must have been marvellously flourishing at that time.  In all these countries he was in the midst of Paganism.[5] At Caesarea, he saw the celebrated grotto of Panium, thought to be the source of the Jordan, and with which the popular belief had associated strange legends;[6] he could admire the marble temple which Herod had erected near there in honor of Augustus;[7] he probably stopped before the numerous votive statues to Pan, to the Nymphs, to the Echo of the Grotto, which piety had already begun to accumulate in this beautiful place.[8]

[Footnote 1:  Jos., Ant., XVIII. ii. 3; Vita, 12, 13, 64.]

[Footnote 2:  I adopt the opinion of Dr. Thomson (The Land and the Book, ii. 34, and following), according to which the Gergesa of Matthew viii. 28, identical with the Canaanite town of Girgash (Gen. x. 16, xv. 21; Deut. vii. 1; Josh. xxiv. 11), would be the site now named Kersa or Gersa, on the eastern shore, nearly opposite Magdala.  Mark v. 1, and Luke viii. 26, name Gadara or Gerasa instead of Gergesa. Gerasa is an impossible reading, the evangelists teaching us that the town in question was near the lake and opposite Galilee.  As to Gadara, now Om-Keis, at a journey of an hour and a half from the lake and from the Jordan, the local circumstances given by Mark and Luke scarcely suit it.  It is possible, moreover, that Gergesa may have become Gerasa, a much more common name, and that the topographical impossibilities which this latter reading offered may have caused Gadara to be adopted.—­Cf.  Orig., Comment. in Joann., vi. 24, x. 10; Eusebius and St. Jerome, De situ et nomin. loc. hebr., at the words [Greek:  Gergesa], [Greek:  Gergasei].]