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 reach it, instead of crossing the Jordan. "No chain of evidence," says Dr Tristram, "can be less open to cavil than that which identifies Kerak with Kir-Moab (Isaiah xv. 1) or Kir-Hareseth. It was the castle 'Kir,' as distinguished from the metropolis 'Ar' of the country, i.e., Rabbath Moab, the modern Rabba." The Targum translates the name as "Kerakah." The Crusaders mistook it for Petra, and gave to its bishop that title, which the Greek Church has still retained, but the name in the vernacular has continued unchanged. No wonder, as we look down from the neighbouring heights upon it, that the combined armies of Israel, Judah, and Edom could not take it, and that "in Kir-Haraseth left they the stones thereof; howbeit the archers went about it and smote it," but to no purpose.

The position is so strong by nature that it would be seized upon as a fortress from the very earliest times. The platform on which the city is built is on a lofty brow, which pushes out like a peninsula and is only connected with other ground by a narrow neck. Two deep wadies flank it north and south, with steeply scarped or else rugged sides. There have been originally only two entrances to Kerak, and both of them through tunnels in the side of the cliff, emerging on the platform of the town.

Another town—reckoned to Reuben in an ancient fragment of poetry, but rebuilt by Gad (Num. xxi. 30, xxxii. 34,)—was Dibon. It is now identified with Dhiban, on the Roman road, about 3 miles north of the Arnon, a spot where there are extensive ruins. It is described by Dr Tristram as being quite as dreary and featureless a ruin as any other of the Moabite desolate heaps. "With its waterless plain," he says, "the prophecy is fulfilled—'Thou daughter that dost inhabit Dibon, come down from thy glory, and sit in thirst; for the spoiler of Moab shall come upon thee, and he shall destroy thy strongholds' (Jer. xlviii. 18). The place is full of cisterns, caverns, vaulted under-