ep and goats, and the music that I hear is from
their reed-harps which they play as they lead the way over rugged
mountain paths to find greener pastures and better waters.

We tarry here only a little while. Not long after lunch we pass a
grotto of small size in the hill-side. Evidently the carven ruins are
the remains of an ancient temple that stood here in the days when a
pagan people held possession of the land; and I feel sure that a
fountain must exist here a good part of the year, though now it is dry.

A little farther on is Jabesh-gilead. The story of Jabesh-gilead is a
touching one. The people of the city were besieged by the Ammonites
under their king, Nahash. The men of the city were willing to make a
covenant to serve the Ammonites. But Nahash told them that the only
condition on which he would make a covenant with them would be to
thrust out all their right eyes and lay it as a reproach upon Israel.
The elders of Jabesh asked a respite of seven days in which to get
help, which request was granted. The situation was critical in the
extreme. Messengers left the besieged city and hurried to the new king
of Israel. Saul heard the story of their distresses. Immediately he
gathered an army of three hundred and thirty thousand men, and,
marching rapidly up the Jordan Valley, crossed the river and attacked
the Ammonites and completely routed them with great slaughter. And thus
he saved the city.

The men of Jabesh-gilead never forgot Saul and his kindness to them.
Forty years later the disastrous battle of Gilboa was fought. In this
battle both Saul and Jonathan were slain. The next day when the
Philistines searched for spoils among the dead they found Saul and his
three sons, and they cut off his head to carry it as a trophy to
Philistia; but they took the headless trunks of the king and his sons
to Beth-shan and fastened them against its walls as a terrible warning
to the Israelites. But, "when the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead heard of
that which the Philistines had done to Saul, all the valiant men arose
and went all night and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons
from the wall of Bethshan and came to Jabesh and burnt them there. And
they took their bones and buried them under a tree at Jabesh, and
fasted seven days." (II. Samuel 31:11-13.)

Off to the left a little way I see Tabakat Fahil, identified as Pella,
the place to which the Christians of Jerusalem fled just before the
siege of Titus in