We were preparing to remount for continuing the journey when our guide espied four wild-looking Arabs walking with long strides up the hill, so as to pass behind and above us; they were well armed, and made no reply to our challenge. As our horses and the guide's spear would have benefited us little on the steep hill-side, but on the contrary were tempting prizes, and as our fire-arms were not so numerous as theirs, we thought fit to pace away before they should obtain any further advantage of situation over us. In another quarter of an hour we left the straight road to Caiffa, and struck out northwards, crossing the Kishon at a fort opposite a village on a hill called _El Hharatheeyeh_, just before we should otherwise have come to a low hill covered with a ripe crop of barley, which, from its formation and other circumstances, bore the appearance of an ancient fortified place. This hill was named _'Asfi_, as I wrote it from pronunciation. This, with the _Hharatheeyeh_, one assisting the other, would prove a good military defence at this end of the valley, as Kaimoon and the Kasees were at the other. Dr Thomson, in his "Land and the Book," chap. xxxi., considers this site to be that of "Harosheth of the Gentiles," (Judges iv. 13,) and I have no doubt that his supposition is correct; the topography agrees, and the etymology in both Hebrew and Arabic is one, viz., "ploughed land." This author, however, makes no mention of _'Asfi_ though he speaks of "the double Tell." Whether 'Asfi was an aboriginal home of the people in the modern _Esfia_ on the summit of Carmel, I have no means of knowing; but that a population, when emigrating to a new settlement, sometimes carried their name with them, appears in Scripture in the instance of Luz, (Judges i. 26,) and of Dan in the 19th chapter. Previous to this day's journey I had no adequate idea of the quantity of water that could be poured into the Kishon channel by the affluents above-mentioned, (since our passing the Lejjoon stream which runs in an opposite direction,) namely, the Menzel el Basha, the 'Ain Sufsafeh, Wadi Keereh, and Wadi Mel'hh, all these on the Carmel side of the river, and omitting the more important spring called _Sa'adeh_, near _Beled esh Shaikh_, on the way to Caiffa. Still portions of the channel are liable to be dried up in that direction, although the bed extending to Jeneen if not to Gilboa contains springs from the ground at intervals, but the level character of the country and the softness of the ground are unfavourable to the existence of a free river course. There was but little water at Hharatheeyeh when we crossed in the month of May. The 'Ain Sa'adeh, however, which I did not then visit, never fails, and in full season, the Kishon near the sea becomes a formidable river, as I have more than once found.