Bible Places; Or, the Topogrqphy of the Holy Land (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Hazor Slnial, " the enclosure of jackals," is four times mentioned, but only incidentally. It belonged to Simeon, and, from the passages where it occurs, was to the west of Moladah. Jackals abound most in the dry sandy district adjoining Philistia; and to the north-east of WELL AT BEERSHEBA. El Meshash, on a high bluff, are the ruins of a considerable place, built of large flint blocks, and still known by the similar name of S'aweh. Beersheba, also belonging to Simeon, is on manyaccounts the most interesting locality in the south country. Its position admits of no doubt?the well- known Bir-es-Seba. Long lines of foundations mark the ancient city, or rather village, for it seems to have always been what Jerome describes it in the fourth century?a very large unwalled place, with a garrison. The ruins are about half a mile in extent, but scattered, and include the foundations of a Greek church, with apse, sacristy, and aisles. Only a fragment of the apse remains above the pavement, although in the fourteenth century some of the churches were still standing. The seven wells vary from five to thirteen feet in diameter. One which we measured was twelve and a-half feet in diameter, thirty-four feet till the rock was reached, and seems to be pierced about thirty feet further through the rock. The water, when we visited it, was standing at thirty-eight feet, but varies with the season. The Arabs may well point with pride to the work of their father Abraham. The sides above the native rock are built with finely-squared large stones, hard as marble. Yet the ropes of water-drawers for 4,000 years have worn the edges with no less than 143 flutings, the shallowest of them four inches deep. Ancient marble troughs are arranged at convenient distances round the wells, some oblong and some...