Returning to the surface of the ground, and sitting beside the well whither the sons and daughters of the patriarchs had often come for water, and perchance where the Master had sat, I read its thrilling history as recorded by Moses and by John. With an accuracy that must claim the faith of every candid mind, all the facts of the sacred narrative are in harmony with the physical features of the scene. Stretching out to the north, east, and south is the parcel of a field Jacob bought of Hamor for a hundred pieces of money,[486] and on its western border is the well. The three great religious sects agree as to its identity, and its site has been preserved in the memory and affections of man through an unbroken tradition to our own time. To one not conversant with Eastern customs it would appear improbable that a man as shrewd and prudent as Jacob would be at the expense and labor of excavating a well so near the living springs in the upper valley, which have always poured their irrigating waters down the Vale of Shechem. But the reflection on the prudence and economy of the patriarch is removed by the consideration of the well-known fact that in the East water is more valuable than land, and a higher value is set upon a well or spring than upon fields of pasture. “Pasture your flocks on my hills and plains, but let my wells alone,” is the only request the Oriental makes of the stranger. In a land where water is scarce, every proprietor aims to have a well of his own, which he guards with peculiar vigilance. The custom of digging wells on a newly-purchased estate is as old as Abraham and Isaac; and as in their times, so now, there are more quarrels over wells of water than over fields of grain. Subject to the same social laws, Jacob but indicated his wisdom and conformed to an acknowledged usage in first purchasing a field and then digging a well. Accepting a tradition so venerable, I yielded to the full enjoyment which such a scene is calculated to afford, and the week I spent at Nablous I never wearied in my journeyings to drink of these delicious waters.