The Committee who organized the Survey and the officers who carried it out deserve our gratitude, for they have conferred a lasting benefit upon Palestine travellers and upon all students of the Bible. We have now a map by which a traveller can find his way. Dr Robinson and other explorers of that day used to describe the position of a place by saying it was two hours east from the last, and then one and a quarter hours north-west; but we now have exact distances. We have a map which helps us to understand Bible narratives of personal journeys or the march of armies. We can now see which route _must_ have been followed; we can pursue step by step the Scripture events. We are certain now that the Bible could not have been written in any other country under heaven. Before the Survey the Sea of Galilee was variously computed as being from 300 feet to 600 feet below the Mediterranean: it is now fixed at 682. The courses of the affluents of the Jordan are found to be entirely different from those previously shown. Only four fords of the Jordan were known and marked on the maps, whereas we now have more than forty. Villages have had to be transferred from one side to the other of the great boundary valleys. Scores and scores of Scripture sites, wrongly placed or altogether lost, have been found and fixed. And the finding of the sites has enabled the surveyors to trace accurately the boundaries of tribes and provinces. How was it possible to understand the Bible history unless we knew the situation of towns, the boundaries of tribes, the fords and passes and valleys which were open to foreign invaders? How could we understand it unless we knew the routes of wayfarers and the way of commerce? These things have now at last been ascertained, and with accuracy. When the base line which was measured on the Jaffa plain was checked by a line measured on the plain of Esdraelon, it was found to be perfectly satisfactory; and the closing line when calculated in 1876 at Southampton had a margin of only 20 feet, which is an invisible distance on the one inch scale. It may be claimed for the Survey that the new discoveries are almost as numerous as all those of former travellers put together; and nothing so great has been done for the right understanding of the Old and New Testaments since the translation of the Scriptures into the vulgar tongue. [_Authorities and Sources (Western Palestine)_:--“Survey Memoirs of Palestine Exploration Fund.” “Tent Work in Palestine.” By Major Conder. “Palestine in its Physical Aspects.” Rev. Canon Tristram. “Sinai and Palestine.” By Dean Stanley. “Twenty-One Years’ Work in the Holy Land.” Published by the P. E. Fund. “Memoir on the Geology.” Dr Ed. Hull. “Mount Seir.” Dr Ed. Hull. “Introduction to the Survey.” Trelawney Saunders. “Quarterly Statements of P. E. Fund.” Smith’s “Dictionary of the Bible.” “_Rob Roy_ on the Jordan.” John Macgregor.] 11. _The East of Jordan._