Several times to-day I could clearly distinguish the remains of old Roman roads, well paved, and with curbing arrangement excellently preserved.  What vast sums of money and what great amount of labor must have been expended on these old high-ways of the time when this territory was occupied by the Romans!  And where Rome walked she left her path well made, and she left the impress of her thought in rock-paved road, or in the lasting marble of her pillared temples and carven tombs.

“By the Watch-Tower”

CHAPTER VI.

Soon after entering the village of Coefrinje my dragoman had the rare good fortune to find a former acquaintance, but whom he did not know to be in those mountains.  His name was Elias Mitry, who, with his wife, had come up from Jerusalem to do missionary work under the auspices of the Church of England.  Although he was a native of Palestine and talked very poor English, yet he offered us a welcome to his humble home than which no more royal was accorded us anywhere.  The meeting with my dragoman was an exhibition of genuine joy, and he seemed equally pleased to have me in his home; especially did he consider it an honor to be my host when my dragoman told him that he was escorting a “school-master” through the land.  In that land it seems that the teacher is almost reverenced because of his profession, while, it may be said by way of contrast, in some sections of my home land he is scarcely respected because of his profession.  Indeed, I was treated as a guest of honor; the best that the home afforded was at my service.  Stuffed cucumbers, figs, olives, pomegranates, and what, for want of a better name, I call “congealed grape-juice,” —­all these were placed before me when in the early evening they aided my guide in serving supper.

We spent little over four hours in the saddle to-day, so I am not wearied, and I can give interested attention to the surroundings.  And there is much to interest me here.  For, while the name “Coefrinje” is not mentioned in the Bible, nor is its site definitely identified with the location of any biblical city, yet there is much of Bible story centered at points within five miles of this town.

Just across the narrow valley, only a few hundred yards distant, is the height, Kulat er Rubad.  It is crowned with the ruins of an old castle-fortress called (together with the peak on which it stands) the “watch-tower of Gilead.”  The view from the dismantled ramparts is not excelled in this part of the world.  It, indeed, rivals the view from the celebrated peak south of the Jabbok, Jebel Osha.  Dr. Thomson says, “In reality this prospect includes more points of biblical and historical interest than any other on the face of the earth.”  And Dr. Merrill, after enumerating many of the famous characters of history that moved under the gaze of this mount of out-look, adds, “The view is more than a picture.  It is a panorama of great variety, beauty, and significance.”  To me it is wonderfully impressive.