“And Mesha, King of Moab, was a sheep-master, and rendered unto the King of Israel an hundred thousand lambs and an hundred thousand rams with wool.” (2 Kings III: 4). Here, again, the Bible receives fresh confirmation from geographical facts; Moab, with its extensive grass-covered uplands, is even now an essentially sheepbreeding country, although the “fenced cities and folds for sheep,” of which mention is made in the Book of Numbers (XXXII: 36), are all in ruins. But in its palmier days, when those rich pastures were covered with flocks, no more appropriate title could have been given to the king of such a country than that he “was a sheep-master.” In this same mountainous region, about six miles north of Kerak, near the head of a deep wady which empties into the Dead Sea, is situated Machaerus, where the head-man’s ax ended the earthly life of John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ. Machaerus, like Kerak, is a natural fortress—one of Nature’s strongholds. Josephus describes it as follows: “The nature of the place was very capable of affording the surest hopes of safety to those that possessed it, as well as delay and fear to those that should attack it; for what was walled in was itself a very rocky hill, elevated to a very great height, which circumstance alone made it very hard to be subdued. It was also so contrived by nature that it could not be easily ascended; for it is, as it were, ditched about with such valleys on all sides, and to such a depth, that the eye can not reach their bottoms, and such as are not easily to be passed over, and even such as it is impossible to fill up with earth. For that valley which cuts it on the west extends to three score furlongs; on the same side it was also that Machaerus had the tallest top of its hill elevated above the rest. But then for the valleys that lay on the north and south sides, although they be not so large as that already described, yet it is in like manner an impracticable thing to think of getting over them; and for the valley that lies on the east side, its depth is found to be no less than a hundred cubits. It extends as far as a mountain that lies over against Machaerus, with which it is bounded. Herod built a wall round on top of the hill, and erected towers at the corners a hundred and sixty cubits high; in the middle of which place he built a palace, after a magnificent manner, wherein were large and beautiful edifices. He also made a great many reservoirs for the reception of water, that there might be plenty of it ready for all uses” (Wars VI: 1-2).