Ramla has at present little to detain a traveller, though it was formerly a city of considerable dimensions; its population now is about 3,000, principally Mahommedans and Christians of the Greek church. At the borders on the western side, thirty miles from Jerusalem, are some vast subterranean apartments belonging to the ancient times of the city. One is one hundred and fifty feet long by forty in width, and is twenty-five feet deep; the second and third are each seventy feet square, and of the same depth as the former. Adjoining the second, is a tower twenty-five feet square, and still one hundred feet in height, and a conspicuous object at a great distance on the plain. Our time did not admit of a visit to these ruins, and for the dimensions I am indebted to Mr. Thompson, by whom they have been described. Mr. Thompson was at Ramla during the recent earthquake, and heard a debate on its causes by the learned men of the city; The Cadi, or Judge, spoke at last, and with gravity suitable to his high station, gave his solution of the phenomenon. “The earth,” he said, “has seven foundations; the first, water; second, air; third, a mountain; fourth, a cushion; fifth, (Mr. T. does not recollect;) sixth, a great rock; and seventh, the horn of the great ox. When the ox becomes fatigued, he changes the rock from one horn to the other, and that caused the shaking.” After some slight refreshment, at an early hour on the 16th we resumed our journey, and soon found ourselves once more breathing the country air. We passed some ruins on our right just after leaving the city, and also, soon after this, a company of about 200 cavalry at drill on the plain. Our road, I ought to have remarked before this, was not directly across the plain, but in a slanting direction, Jerusalem being situated a little to the south of east from Jaffa. The distance from Ramla is thirty miles. We descended two or three steep banks, separated from each other by intervals of several miles, and thus arrived, at length, at the lowest level of the plain, which appears to consist of this level, and, on the west of it, of a succession of terraces, each about forty feet in height, and three or four miles in width. The country, during our morning ride, was not of so melancholy a cast as on the day previous, patches of millet or indian corn occurring here and there, with other signs of cultivation; but the sun now beat upon us with scorching power. About ten o’clock we passed a miserable village close on our left, and an hour after, a cone-shaped eminence on our right, with some ruins, supposed to be the remains of Beth-Horon, noticed in 2 Chron. viii. 5. 1 Samuel, xiii. 18.[14]