We now cross into Galilee. High on the hill, and before us, as we face the west, is the city of Dan. O Dan, what a history thou hast had! What memories gather around thy ancient, thy venerable head! As thy name indicates, thou wast once a judge. Thy sons were born to positions of honor. But Ichabod!—“thy glory has departed!” Thou art no longer a sightly city, but a ruined and disheveled village. Thou no longer rulest, but art now thyself ruled with a rod of iron. “There is the moral of all human tales; ’Tis but the same rehearsed of the past, First Freedom, and then glory—when that fails, Wealth, vice, corruption—barbarism at last!” In olden times Dan was an important place—the most important city in north Galilee. We often see the expression, “from Dan to Beersheba,” which means from the extreme north to the extreme south of Palestine, a distance of one hundred and sixty-five miles. “From Dan to Beersheba” meant to Jews of old just what “from Maine to Mexico” and “from New York to San Francisco” means to Americans—the uttermost limits of the country. I give in the following lines an account of a nocturnal visit that Abraham, the father of the faithful, made to this city of Dan. “And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and he pursued them unto Dan. And he divided himself against them, he and his servants by night, and smote them, and pursued into Hobah, which is on the left hand of Damascus. And he brought back all the goods, and also his brother Lot and his goods, and the women also and the people.” Coming into Galilee, we find ourselves at once in a beautiful valley lying between two mountain ridges running north and south. The valley is apparently ten miles wide and fifteen to eighteen miles long. The soil is as black as a crow and fertile as the alluvial deposits of the Nile. It is so rich that it looks as if it would sprout a shadow—I am afraid to stand still long in a place. Only small patches of this fertile valley are cultivated and these in the most primitive and imperfect manner. The land is scratched over with wooden plows, drawn, as I have sometimes seen, by a donkey and a skeleton of a milk cow yoked together, or by a camel and an ox harnessed side by side. Thus they tickle the soil which in turn smiles with a sickly, sentimental harvest, and the people live in filth, penury, and poverty; whereas, if they had western vim and push and shove and energy, if they had improved implements of agriculture and would send them deep into the ground and turn up the soil, “the desert would blossom as the rose,” and these trifling sons of want would soon have to “pull down their old barns and build greater ones.” Peace and plenty would usurp the place now held by pinching poverty, and Jerusalem once more would stand