=Significance of the East-Jordan Land.= Health, beauty, and fertility have ever been the three rich possessions of the east-Jordan land. It was effectually cut off, however, from contact with the teeming, highly civilized life of the Mediterranean seaboard by the deep chasm of the Jordan and Dead Sea valley and by the barren hills that flanked this great gorge on its southern end. It was a land that faced the desert and the east rather than the west. It was itself the loadstone that constantly attracted the wandering dwellers of the desert. The life and institutions of the desert have here prevailed through all the centuries. Here the wandering nomads first tasted and learned to appreciate the advantages of settled agricultural life and made the gradual and natural transition from the nomadic to the agricultural state. Here also the mighty energies of the powerful western nations were put forth in a mighty effort to conquer and to hold this land, for they realized that it was their natural eastern outpost against the desert. It was here, therefore, that the militant civilization and life of the East and West met, struggled, and mingled. Here the same conflicts and processes are going on to-day as in the past. This close contact with the desert has always been the strength, the significance, and the weakness of the east-Jordan land. VIII THE TWO CAPITALS: JERUSALEM AND SAMARIA =Importance of Jerusalem and Samaria.= Two cities of ancient Palestine, Jerusalem and Samaria, towered above all others, both in size and in importance. Each was for a long period the capital of an important kingdom. Each represented a distinct type of civilization and religion. Their topography throws much light upon their development and history. =Site of Jerusalem.= At first glance the site of Jerusalem seems one of the most unpromising places in all the land of Palestine for a great city. It lies on two or three low hills, projecting from the irregular plateau, which extends southward from the watershed of central Judah. It is overshadowed by higher hills near by and has no lofty, commanding acropolis. The Wilderness of Judea bounds it on the east and the hills and valleys about are rocky and comparatively barren. The reason why a city originally sprang up on this forbidding site was the presence of a spring, now known as the Virgin's Spring, on the side of the Kidron Valley^{(54)} to the southeast of the present Jerusalem. It is the one perennial spring in this region and fixes at once the site of the old pre-Israelite town. (_Cf._ map op. p. 203.)