Grand amid its ruins and conspicuous in its desolation is the Church of John the Baptist, reared to the memory of that great man some time during the reign of the Crusaders. Standing on the very brow of the broad terrace on the east, its broken arches and crumbling walls recall the beautiful ruins of Melrose and Dryburg Abbeys. In form it resembles a Greek cross. The finish of the interior is of the Corinthian order, and exceedingly beautiful. Measuring 153 feet in length and 75 in width, the interior consists of a nave and two grand aisles, formed by rows of clustered columns ornamented with Corinthian capitals. In the eastern end is the chancel, with pointed arches elegantly adorned, resembling the segment of a circle. But the Gothic roof is gone, and in the aisles grass grows where once cowled monks and mail-clad knights knelt in prayer. On white marble tablets set in the wall are sculptured crosses of the Order of the Knights of St. John, now mutilated by the hand of Moslem ignorance. The southern half of the interior has been inclosed for a mosque, and under a wely in this inclosure is the reputed tomb of St. John, called by the Arabs “Neby Yahya.” It is a small chamber excavated in the solid rock, reached by the descent of 21 steps. Here pious tradition points to the final resting-place of his headless body, brought hither by his friends from the castle of Machaerus, on the east of the Jordan, where it was originally interred. When the brave Crusaders took possession of the Holy Land, they guarded with affection and veneration the sepulchre of their patron saint, and reared over his ashes this church as his funeral pile. Though impossible to determine the correctness of the tradition that here urns the dust of the greatest of prophets, it is no less a tribute to his memory, and a dishonor to the memory of his royal murderer, that the name of John and that of Herod are the only two conspicuous names perpetuated by the ruins of Samaria.