nd of Bashan. The facts, he says, would not stand the arithmetic of
Bishop Colenso for an instant; yet from the summit of the castle of
Salcah (capital of his late gigantic Majesty, King Og) he counted thirty
utterly deserted and perfectly habitable towns; so that he finds no
difficulty in believing the bulletin of Jair in which the Israelite
general declares he took in the province of Argob sixty great cities
"fenced with high walls, gates, and bars, besides unwalled towns a great
many." Nor is the fulfilment of prophecy in regard to this kingdom,
populous and prosperous beyond any other known to history, less literal
or less startling.

"Thus saith the Lord God of Israel: They shall eat their bread with
carefulness, and drink their water with astonishment, that her land may
be desolate from all that is therein, because of the violence of all
that dwell therein. And the cities that are inhabited shall be laid
waste, and the land shall be desolate."

Everywhere Mr. Porter witnessed the end predicted by Ezekiel: a nation
might dwell in these enchanted cities, but they are all empty and silent
as the desert. Their architecture, however, is eloquent in witness of
the successive changes through which they have passed in reaching the
state of final desolation foretold of the prophet. The dwellings, so
ponderous and so simple, are the work of the original Rephaim, or
giants, from whom the Israelites conquered the land, and the masonry is
of these first conquerors. The Greeks have left the proof of their
presence in the temples and inscriptions, and the Romans in the
structure of the roads; while the Saracens have added mosques, and the
Turks solitude and danger,--for the whole land is infested with robbers.
But while Jewish masonry has crumbled to dust, while Roman roads are
weed-grown, and the temples of the gods and the mosques of Mahomet
mingle their ruins, the dwellings of the Rephaim stand intact and
everlasting, as if the earth had loved her mighty first-born too well to
suffer the memory of their greatness to perish from her face.

It must be acknowledged that Mr. Porter has not done the best that could
be done for the country through which he travels. With a style extremely
graphic at times, he seems wanting in those arts of composition by which
he could convey to his readers an impression of things at once vivid and
comprehensive. He visits the cities of Bashan, one after another, and
tells us repeatedly that they