The town is perched up in the line of the Anti-Lebanon, at the end of a _cul-de-sac_ running inwards from the plain, and stands at an elevation of more than 2000 feet above the sea-level, though this is scarcely apparent by reason of the lofty mountains everywhere around, especially Hermon, under the shadow of which Hhasbeya is nestled. This was the cleanest town and the one in best repair at that time that I had hitherto seen in Palestine or Syria; what it may be since the calamities of 1860, I know not. The majority of the inhabitants were Christian, with a good many Druses, and a few Moslems and Jews. We had a most friendly reception from the native Protestants, and from the governor, Ameer Saad ed Deen Shehab and his family. In the afternoon of the next day we passed on to _Banias_. How different a matter is travelling in that country from merely drawing a pencil line across the map from one point to another, and measuring the distance of that line. By such a method of making a journey it is but a trifle of thirty miles from Soor to Hhasbeya, and less than a hundred and twenty from the latter to Jerusalem. (I mention these places because they belong to the journey here described,) and it may be said by stay-at-home travellers in a carpeted saloon, at a mahogany table, that these distances can be covered on horseback in a determinate number of hours, allowing so many miles to an hour; but Palestine is not so smooth as the greater part of England, and the ways (one cannot well call them roads) are not drawn in direct lines; climate also counts for something; and unforeseen incidents will occur to mar the plans of even those habituated to the country. To-day's progress, however, was tolerably plain, though not level, and it occupied six or seven hours. In an hour and a half we caught first sight of the lake _Hhooleh_ (the Semechonitis of Josephus) in the due south, and at this point we entered upon a district strewn with volcanic basalt, in dark-brown pieces, porous and rounded at the edges. A peasant directed us forwards to the _Tell el Kadi_, which at length we reached--an eminence rising from the plain, out of which issues a river all formed at once, gushing from the hill over a stony bed. This is one of the heads of the Jordan, and the place is that of _Dan_, which Josephus erroneously supposed to supply the last syllable of that river's name. But beyond all question it is the site of the city Dan known throughout Scripture history for many ages, and under a variety of circumstances: among the rest for the forcible invasion of it by a number of colonists from the tribe of Dan in the south of Palestine, where they found their allotted district too strait for their possession; and being established here, they gave the city the name of their patriarchal chief.