At Azotus, or Ashdod, one of the Philistine cities, is a large mound, with columns cropping up out of the ground on the outskirts of it. Mr Trelawney Saunders, the geographer, has described the site in his “Introduction to the Survey of Western Palestine.” Ashdod, on a hillock (alt. 140 feet), at the western end of the plain of Zeita, is now separated from all that remains of its port, by sand-downs 3 miles in breadth. The site is occupied by the present village of Esdud, with eighteen hundred people, but the remains of this primeval city, once so strong and mighty, are so few and insignificant that one is tempted to suppose the greater part of the city may be buried beneath the sands. If so, they may be in a superior state of preservation, and would perhaps repay for digging out. Gath, the birth-place of Goliath, has long been a lost city, but is now reasonably identified with _Tell es Sufi_ at the mouth of the _Wady_ or water-course which runs from near Hebron, past Adullam and Shochoh, and westward towards Ashdod. It is the site of the Crusading fortress of Blanche Garde, which was built in 1144 A.D. as an outpost for defence against the people of Ascalon. It is now a mud village with olives beneath it, standing on a cliff 300 feet high, which is burrowed with caves. The Rev. Henry George Tomkins takes _Tell es Sufi_ to be the “mound of Safi,” and regards Safi as a personal name. In a learned paper in the _Quarterly Statement_, October 1886, he argues that Safi was a brother of Goliath’s, and if so this is an additional reason for regarding _Tell es Sufi_ as Gath. Ascalon, “the bride of Syria,” is still called Askalon. The fortifications and walls are in ruins, and the site of the city is a garden planted with fruit trees and vegetables. The walls are the ruins of battlements, erected by Richard Lionheart in 1191 A.D., in place of those destroyed by Saladin, and doubtless with the same materials. They are half buried by the great dunes of rolling sand which are ever being blown up by the sea breeze from the southward. The whole interior of the site is covered with rich soil, to a depth of about 10 feet, and the natives find fragments of fine masonry, shafts, capitals, and other remains of the old city, by digging into it. Of Herod’s beautiful colonnades nothing now remains. The Crusaders had little respect for antiquities, and the innumerable granite pillar shafts which are built horizontally into the walls are no doubt those originally brought to the town by Herod.