“The people of the town are remarkable for the gay colouring of their dresses, and the Christian women for their beauty. Many a charming bit of colour, many a shapely figure set off by picturesque costume, many a dark eye and ruddy cheek have I seen in the streets or by the spring. This beauty is peculiar to the Christians of Bethlehem and Nazareth.” Jesus lived at Nazareth until the time arrived for entering upon his public work. The immediate occasion which called him forth from the carpenter’s shop was the news that John the Baptist had begun preaching in the wilderness of Judea. The work of the Palestine explorers has thrown important light on the movements and mission stations of John the Baptist. John appears to have begun his public work at the great ford of the Jordan near Jericho; and there went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea to be baptized. The Jordan at this part is a brown, rapid swirling stream, about 20 yards across, fringed with a jungle of tamarisk and cane and willow, in which the leopard and the wolf find a hiding place. The tradition which says that Jesus was baptized here is at least as old as the fourth century; the Greek and the Latin churches agree in regard to it, and at the present day pilgrims from all churches resort to this spot to bathe in the sacred waters. Our explorers see no reason to doubt this tradition, and a difficulty which did exist they have been enabled to remove. It is stated in the fourth Gospel (John i. 28), that John was baptizing in Bethabara beyond Jordan, when Jesus came to him; that the Baptist bare testimony to Christ during two days, and on the third day Jesus was minded to go into Galilee and was present at Cana at the marriage feast. Hostile critics of the fourth Gospel, taking the traditional scene of John’s baptizing near Jericho--where Bethabara has usually been placed on the maps--asserted that Jesus would have a journey of 80 miles to accomplish in a single day to reach Cana of Galilee, and that the feat is of course impossible. But there is really no assertion that it was done or attempted. It is only a tradition of the fourth century which fixes Bethabara so far south, or says that Jesus was baptized at Bethabara. A position near Upper Galilee would suit the narrative better as the site of Bethabara. Now the surveyors in the course of their work marked all the fords of the Jordan, and collected all the names. The following winter, when Major Conder was looking through the list in order to prepare an index, he was struck with the presence of the word _Abara_. He saw at once that the house or station at this place would be Beth-Abara, which had thus been discovered unwittingly. He looked it out upon the map, and found it to be one of the principal fords of the Jordan, just above the place where the Jalud river, flowing down the Valley of Jezreel and by Beisan, debouches into Jordan. The distance thence to Cana would only be 22 miles. The fourth