ance concerning anything in the country
beyond the immediate vicinity of their convents.

We halted at the ruined village of Shocoh (now made by a grammatical
diminutive form of Arabic into Sh'weikeh) after picking, each of us his
five smooth stones out of the brook, as memorials for ourselves, and for
friends far away, endeavouring at the same time to form a mental picture
of the scene that is so vividly narrated in sacred history, and familiar
to us from early childhood.

There are now no regular inhabitants at the place; only a few persons
occasionally live in caves and broken houses about there. Some remnants
of antiquity, however, still exist, especially the wells, of fine masonry
and great depth, at the foot of the hill. This probably represents the
lower Shocoh mentioned by Eusebius and Jerome in the Onomasticon,
"_Soccho_, duo sunt vici ascendentibus Eleutheropoli AEliam in nono
milliario, alter superior, alter inferior, qui vocantur Socchoth in tribu
Judae." Some peasants wandering about brought me to the fallen lintel of
the door of a small mosque, bearing a rudely-executed Cufic-Arabic
inscription, illegible because, as they said, "it had been eaten by the
nights and days."

Large flocks of sheep were pasturing over the stubble, (for some of the
harvest was already cut in that warm sheltered locality,) led by such
shepherd boys as David the Bethlehemite may have been, and large flights
of blue pigeons circling in short courses over our heads. Among the
demolished houses some women were churning the milk of the flocks in the
usual mode, by swinging alternately to each other a sewed up goat-skin,
(the bottle of the Old Testament, Josh. ix. 4; Judges iv. 19; Ps. cxix.
83;) a hill close at hand is crowned by a Mohammedan Weli (a kind of
solitary chapel) named _Salhhi_.

The view in every direction is most imposing. This rough plan will give
a tolerably good idea of the Vale of 'Elah. Across the valley, opposite
to Shocoh, stands a very fine terebinth-tree. Possibly in ancient days
there were many such in the district, and so the valley and the village
of 'Elah may have acquired this name.

_'Ajoor_ commands a view of the great plain and the sea. From that hill,
looking eastwards, the vale has a magnificent appearance as a ground for
manoeuvres of an army.

[Picture: Plan of Vale of 'Elah]

Near _Zacariah_ the Wadi es Sunt contains but few of those trees. We
passed close under