Soon after noon we gained the olive-trees alongside of _Tubas_, a prosperous village, yet inhabited by a people as rude and coarse as their neighbours. Tubas is always liable to incursions from the eastern Bedaween, and always subject to the local wars of the Tokan and 'Abdu'l Hadi factions. I have known it to be repeatedly plundered. The natural soil here is so fertile that its wheat and its oil, together with those of _Hanoon_, fetch the highest prices in towns; and the grain is particularly sought after as seed for other districts. The place, however, is most remarkable to us as being the _Thebez_ of Judges ix. 50, where Abimelech was slain by the women hurling a millstone on his head from the wall. The more I become acquainted with the peculiar population of _Jebel Nabloos_, (_i.e._ the territory of which Nabloos is the metropolis,) a brutish people "waxing fat and kicking," the more does the history of the book of Judges, especially the first twelve chapters, read like a record of modern occurrences thereabouts. It is as truly an Arab history as any other oriental book can supply. I observed that Mount Gerizim can be seen from Tubas,--which fact seemed to give additional emphasis to the words, "And all the evil of the men of Shechem did God render upon their heads; and upon those came the curse of Jotham, the son of Jerubbaal." The site of Tubas is elevated. It is still a considerable village, and possesses that decided evidence of all very ancient sites in Palestine--a large accumulation of rubbish and ashes. I was told that here, as well as in several of the villages around, there are scattered Christians, one or two families in each among the Moslems, without churches, without clergy, without books or education of any kind; still they are Christians, and carry their infants to the Greek Church in Nabloos for baptism. What a deplorable state of things! Since the date of this journey the Church Missionary Society's agents have in some degree ministered to the spiritual destitution of these poor people by supplying some at least with copies of the Holy Scriptures. Here my principal kawwas, Hadj Mohammed es Serwan, found the fever, which had been upon him more or less for the last three days, so greatly increased, that it was not possible for him to proceed farther with me. The fever he attributed to his having, on arrival at Nabloos, indulged too freely in figs and milk together. The general experience of the country warrants this conclusion.