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Rh waited for him, and when he, almost out of breath, joined us, he said, "I am very sorry, but I have no power to run." So we proceeded more slowly, and did not reach "Beitîn" till six o'clock.

The shades of evening were deepening rapidly, and we did not pause to examine the extensive ruins on the ridge, but alighted in the valley close to the remains of an ancient cistern, formed of large, well-hewn stones. The bottom of it was covered with a bed of fine fresh grass, in the midst of which a stream of water flowed from fountains gushing out of the rock just above it. Scriptural topographists, ancient and modern, agree that this is the Bethel of the Bible. Abraham of old very likely drank of that fountain, and the handmaidens of Sarah may have lingered there day after day when they went down to draw water. There we rested for about half an hour, and took coffee.

The sun had gone down when we rose up to pursue our journey. We were more than three hours' distance from Jerusalem. The stars were shining brightly in a dark sky overhead, but all round the horizon a halo of pale light concealed them. The temperature changed very suddenly at sunset, and we were glad to put on hoods and cloaks. The kawass wrapped a brown camel’s-hair abai around him, and in this dusky costume it was quite impossible to distinguish him on his black horse, as he rode on before me, through valleys or down steep slopes. Now and then, as we ascended a hill, or traversed high table-land, I could see the silhouette of his tarbûshed head against the sky, just above the horizon. I could not make out any of the objects around me except the white rocks in the midst of dark bushes and thorns, and now and then a smooth sheet of water, which reflected the stars, and looked very deep; but my leader splashed through it, and when I followed, I found that the water only wetted my horse's fetlocks, and was the result of the recent rain. Sometimes I could see a solitary tree in dark relief against a white cliff, or the outline of a village crowning a hill-top. I could