On the mountain top is a large oval space, which has been walled round, fragments of the enclosure are easily traceable, as also some broken columns, gray and weather-beaten. This has every appearance of having been one of the many sun-temples devoted to Baal by early Syrians. By temple I here mean a succession of open-air courts, with a central altar for sacrifice; a mound actually exists on the highest spot of elevation, which may well have been the site of the altar. What a vast prospect does this spot command, not only of landscape in every direction, but of sky from which the false worshipper might survey the sun's entire daily course, from its rising out of the vague remote lands of "the children of the East," and riding in meridian splendour over the land of Israel's God, till, slowly descending and cloudless to the very last, it dips behind the blue waters of "the great sea!" Alas! to think that such a spot as this should ever have been desecrated by worship of the creature within actual sight of that holy mountain where the divine glory appeared, more dazzling than the brightest effulgence of the created sun. Sloping westwards from the _Dahar-es-Salahh_ were agreeable rides over a wilderness of green shrubs with occasional pine and karoobah trees, and rough rocks on the way to _Nahhaleen_ or _Bait Ezkareh_, from which we catch a view of the valley of Shocoh, the scene of David's triumph over Goliath, and beyond that the hill of Santa Anna at _Bait Jibreen_. The region there is lonely and silent, with some petty half-depopulated villages in sight, but all far away; sometimes a couple or so of peasants may be met upon the road driving an ass loaded with charcoal or broken old roots of the evergreen oak. Evening excursions in that direction were not infrequent for the purpose of seeing the sun set into the sea, from which the breeze came up so refreshingly. The home resources gave us among the fruit trees, goldfinches, bee-eaters in blue or green and gold, and beccaficas, the latter for food, but so tame that they would stay upon the branches while the gun was levelled at them; in fact, little Alexander, returning one day with several of them that he had shot, complained of want of sport, quoting the lines of his namesake Selkirk in Cowper,--"Their tameness is shocking to me."