The vale or plain (for in Hebrew the word _Emek_ is often applied to the latter also when lying between ranges of hills--sometimes even when they are of considerable breadth, as at Rephaim and elsewhere) is about three hours or twelve miles long, and spacious enough to allow of military occupation and action; hostile armies might of course also occupy the opposite hills. From the direction of Hebron other valleys fall into this wide plain. On another occasion I entered it by that called _Wadi 'Arab_ or _Shaikh_, descending from _'Ain Dirweh_ and _Bezur_ or _Bait Soor_. Wadi 'Arab is commanded at its mouth by _Kharas_ on the north and _Nuba_ on the south. Near to the latter are the ruins of _'Elah_, which I have no doubt gave name to the valley, and not any remarkable terebinth-tree, as is generally guessed by commentators on the Bible, unless, indeed, some remarkable terebinth-tree at first gave name to the village. Neither Robinson nor Porter appears to have seen or heard of this site of 'Elah, neither do they mention the route by the Wadi 'Arab, which lies to the north of Wadi Soor, which they do mention. Southwards, but further inland, lies _Keelah_, which I suppose to be the Keilah of 1 Sam. xxiii. I, the scene of a remarkable incident in David's early career, before retiring to Ziph. The name is registered four hundred years before that in Josh. xv. 44, among the cities of Judah. This, then, being the valley of 'Elah near to Shocoh, must have been the scene of David and Goliath's encounter. How could the Latin monks of the middle ages, and modern Roman Catholic travellers to Jerusalem, ever believe that it took place at Kaloneh near that city? The perversion can only be attributed to their ignorance concerning anything in the country beyond the immediate vicinity of their convents. We halted at the ruined village of Shocoh (now made by a grammatical diminutive form of Arabic into Sh'weikeh) after picking, each of us his five smooth stones out of the brook, as memorials for ourselves, and for friends far away, endeavouring at the same time to form a mental picture of the scene that is so vividly narrated in sacred history, and familiar to us from early childhood. There are now no regular inhabitants at the place; only a few persons occasionally live in caves and broken houses about there. Some remnants of antiquity, however, still exist, especially the wells, of fine masonry and great depth, at the foot of the hill. This probably represents the lower Shocoh mentioned by Eusebius and Jerome in the Onomasticon, "_Soccho_, duo sunt vici ascendentibus Eleutheropoli AEliam in nono milliario, alter superior, alter inferior, qui vocantur Socchoth in tribu Judae." Some peasants wandering about brought me to the fallen lintel of the door of a small mosque, bearing a rudely-executed Cufic-Arabic inscription, illegible because, as they said, "it had been eaten by the nights and days."