Ammon was to be delivered to be a spoil to the Heathen--to be destroyed, and to be a perpetual desolation. “All this country, formerly so populous and flourishing, is now changed into a vast desert.” (_Seetzen’s Travels._) Ruins are seen in every direction. The country is divided between the Turks and the Arabs, but chiefly possessed by the latter. The extortions of the one, and the depredations of the other, keep it in “perpetual desolation,” and make it “a spoil to the Heathen.” “The far greater part of the country is uninhabited, being abandoned to the wandering Arabs, and the towns and villages are in a state of total ruin.” (_Ibid._) “At every step are to be found the vestiges of ancient cities, the remains of many temples, public edifices, and Greek churches.” (_Burckhardt’s Travels._) The cities are left desolate. “Many of the ruins present no objects of any interest. They consist of a few walls of dwelling houses, heaps of stones, the foundations of some public edifices, and a few cisterns filled up; there is nothing entire, though it appears that the mode of building was very solid, all the remains being formed of large stones. In the vicinity of Ammon there is a fertile plain interspersed with low hills, which for the greater part are covered with ruins.” (_Burckhardt’s Travels in Syria._) While the country is thus despoiled and desolate, there are valleys and tracts throughout it which “are covered with a fine coat of verdant pasture, and are places of resort to the Bedouins, where they pasture their camels and their sheep.” (_Buckingham’s Travels in Palestine._) “The whole way we traversed,” says Seetzen, “we saw villages in ruins, and met numbers of Arabs with their camels,” &c. Mr. Buckingham describes a building among the ruins of Ammon, “the masonry of which was evidently constructed of materials gathered from the ruins of other and older buildings on the spot. On entering it at the south end,” he adds, “we came to an open square court, with arched recesses on each side, the sides nearly facing the cardinal points. The recesses in the northern and southern wall were originally open passages, and had arched door ways facing each other; but the first of these was found wholly closed up, and the last was partially filled up, leaving only a narrow passage, just sufficient for the entrance of one man and of the goats, which the Arab keepers drive in here occasionally for shelter during the night.” He relates that he lay down among “flocks of sheep and goats,” close beside the ruins of Ammon; and particularly remarks that, during the night, he “was almost entirely prevented from sleeping by the bleating of flocks.” So literally true is it, although Seetzen, and Burckhardt, and Buckingham, who relate the facts, make no reference or allusion whatever to any of the prophecies, and travelled for a different object than the elucidation of the Scriptures,--that “the chief city of the