We had a tedious ride of about five hours, in the sun, across the Valley of Lebanon.

It proved to be not quite so much of a garden as it had seemed from the hill-sides.

It was a desert, weed-grown waste, littered thickly with stones the size of a man's fist.

Here and there the natives had scratched the ground and reared a sickly crop of grain, but for the most part the valley was given up to a handful of shepherds, whose flocks were doing what they honestly could to get a living, but the chances were against them.

We saw rude piles of stones standing near the roadside, at intervals, and recognized the custom of marking boundaries which obtained in Jacob's time.