It would be well if the topographical survey could be extended so as to cover all the ground occupied by the tribes of Reuben and Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh. It is true indeed that the East of Jordan is less intimately bound up with the Scripture narrative than the West, yet still there are ninety-six places east of Jordan mentioned in the Bible--Dr Selah Merrill estimates that there are two hundred and forty--and it would be an advantage to have them all identified. On the east side, also, the country is much more thickly strewn with ruins than on the west; and although the so-called “giant cities” of Bashan may not deserve that name, yet is the region full of Roman towns, of Nabathean and Arab texts scrawled on the rocks, of Greek temples and Greek inscriptions, and of dolmen groups yet older. In the absence of detailed trigonometrical survey of the whole region, the map published by the Palestine Exploration Society in 1890 is the best that could be compiled from all sources. The sources available were--Van de Velde’s map as a general basis; the route maps of later travellers; the work of the American Palestine Exploration Society as reported in their “Statements;” Major Conder’s survey of 500 square miles in the land of Moab in 1881 and 1882; and lastly, surveys made by Herr Schumacher in the Hauran and the Janlan. _Bashan_: the territory of the half tribe of Manasseh. As an illustration of the abundance of the ancient remains east of Jordan, Dr Selah Merrill, the archæologist of the American Exploring Expedition, says that every one who has visited _Kanawat_ is amazed at the number and variety of the ruined buildings, castles, temples, churches, convents, theatre, bath, palaces, reservoirs, underground apartments or vaults, costly tombs, and still others which have never been fully examined. Dr J. L. Porter found here what he calls a colossal head of Astarte, sadly broken ... with the crescent moon (which gave to this goddess the name _Karnaim_ or two-horned) still on her brow. Mr Tyrwhitt Drake secured a stone at this place which was thought to be part of an altar, upon two opposite sides of which were the features of Baal and Astarte, boldly cut in high relief upon the closest basalt, with foliage, showing the artistic hand. One’s first impression is that all the antiquities are of Roman times and date only from the early centuries of the Christian era. This is indicated not only by the style of architecture but by the considerable number of inscriptions, which form an almost continuous chain from the first century to the fourth. They belong to the Emperors Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Aurelius Verus, Commodus, Septimius Severus, Alexander Severus, &c.