From Hattin we are soon at Tiberias, a town once beautiful and famous, but now notorious for the filth of its streets and the activity of its vermin. The Arabs say that the king of the fleas holds his court there. Josephus tells us that the city was built by Herod Antipas, and named in honour of the Emperor Tiberius. It was therefore a new city in Christ’s day, and probably at first inhabited only by Romans, Antipas himself having a palace there, adorned with figures of animals, “contrary to the Jewish law.” Moreover, as it was built on the site of an ancient burial ground, it would be regarded by the Jews as a polluted and forbidden locality. These circumstances, taken together, may account for the fact that Jesus Christ does not appear ever to have entered the city. The former greatness of Tiberias is indicated by the extent of the walls, 12 feet in thickness, which have been traced by Dr Selah Merrill and by Herr Schumacher for a distance of 3 miles, on the south side. In the course of the wall is an old castle on the summit of a hill, 1000 feet above the town. An aqueduct, 9 miles long, brought pure water from a distance, whereas the present inhabitants are content to drink of the waters of the lake. Looking about in the town we notice some traces of its former grandeur; here a magnificent block of polished granite from Upper Egypt, there a hunting scene carved on the surface of a hard black lintel of basalt, besides old buildings, and broken shafts and columns half buried in rubbish. From Tiberias we go north, and after a ride of 3 miles reach Medjel, which represents the Magdala of Christ’s time, and is known wherever the New Testament is read as the home of Mary Magdalene. The village is insignificant, being only a collection of huts and hovels; the people are poor and degraded, and their children half naked. Travellers approaching the place are greeted by the howling of dogs, which rush out as though they would devour them. Tiberias and Medjel are the only places now inhabited about the lake, and the visitor is impressed with a sense of deadness and desolation. Yet the lake is beautiful, and upon its shores there were in Christ’s time no less than nine cities, while numerous villages dotted the plains and hills around. All the surrounding region was highly cultivated, and the lake itself was covered with fishing boats. There are no more than half a dozen boats now--made at Beyrout, or some other seaport town, and brought hither on the backs of camels--but the lake still swarms with fish. When a revolver was fired into the water at random several fishes were killed and floated on the surface.