Hence Conder’s defect, as some have termed it, is, in truth, his merit. Apart, however, from the pietism of his motives, he deserved well of all who love Palestine. He gave some of his best years to its survey, and that operation did much to revivify the country. His services must always have a value because he, more than any other modern, put an end to a sort of thing formerly common. I mean the sort of thing which a pious old dame is said once to have remarked: “I knew these places were in the Bible, but I did not know they were in Palestine.” Jews in particular owe a good deal to him. I doubt whether I, for one, would ever have visited Medyeh--probably Modin, the home of the Maccabæans--but for Conder. I think I could quote by heart his description how the ancient road from Jerusalem to Lydda emerged from the rocky Beth-horon defiles and “ran along a mountain spur towards the plain”; how, a mile or so to the north of this main road, the village of Modin was built upon the southern slopes of the valley; how the gentle hills of the lowlands (Shephelah) could be seen from the Modin Knoll, stretching westwards. “At their feet, amid dark groves of olive, lay the white town of Lydda, and behind it the broad plain of Sharon extended to a breadth of ten miles. Furthest of all, the yellow-gleaming sand-dunes bounded the rich arable land, and the waters of the Great Sea (the Mediterranean) shone brightly under the afternoon sun.” This description comes from one of Conder’s other books, his _Judas Maccabæus_. But his earlier _Tent Work in Palestine_ (1878) is full of passages just as vivid. It is even more interesting because it shows us the explorer groping for the results, at which he has not yet arrived. Aptly enough, the title-page presents, from a sketch by the author, a theodolite-party at work, for the survey of Western Palestine was conducted on serious trigonometrical methods. That the narrative is so picturesque must not blind us to the truth that the operations were severely scientific. We are now, however, concerned with the pictorial effects. Read, as a parallel to the Modin description, Conder’s account of his first visit to Samaria. Taking the north road from Jerusalem, he passes the ranges about Neby Samuel (probably the ancient Mizpah), and sees the hills of Benjamin, “black against a sky of most delicate blush-rose tint, and the contrast was perhaps the finest in a land where fine effects are common at sunset.” Then he descends into the rough gorge of the Robbers’ Fountain. “The road is not improved by the habit of clearing the stones off the surrounding gardens into the public path.” In the east, roads are often thus made the common dumping-ground for rubbish, and I remember how the walk round the outside of the Jerusalem walls was much spoilt by the heaps of vegetable and other refuse which had been flung over the ramparts. (General Allenby’s campaign has already changed all that