We now descended once more to the plains, and, crossing them, reached the village of Tantura, where we arrived about midday, passing first, however, the ruined fortress of Muzraá, a massive block of masonry about fifty yards square, the walls of which are standing to a height of about ten feet; then turning aside to the old Roman bridge, which spans in a single high arch the artificial cutting through the limestone rocks by which the ancients facilitated the egress of a winter-torrent to the sea. The inhabitants of Tantura have the reputation of being very bad people, and three years ago I saw a party of French tourists at Jerusalem who had been attacked and robbed by them. We were, however, entertained with the greatest hospitality, having a levée of the sheik and village notables, and with difficulty escaping from a banquet which they were preparing for us. They live in a miserable collection of hovels amid the almost defaced ruins of the old town, traces of which, however, are abundant in the neighbourhood. A lofty fragment of wall on a projecting promontory half a mile to the north of the town is all that remains of what must have been a castle of grand dimensions. A chain of small, rocky islets, a few hundred yards from the shore, forms a sort of natural breakwater, and at very little expense Tantura could be converted into a good port. As it is, when the weather is smooth, native craft run in here, and when once at their anchorage can defy any gale. Tantura, or Dor, was one of the towns assigned to the half tribe of Manasseh, but we read that they failed to expel the Canaanites from it, though when Israel “became strong they put them to tribute, but did not utterly drive them out.” In the time of the Romans Dor was a mercantile town of some importance, and, though in the wars of the Diadochi it was besieged and partly destroyed, the Roman general Gabinius restored the town and harbor, and its architectural beauty was such that we read that even in the time of St. Jerome its ruins were still an object of admiration. Unfortunately, since the Turkish occupation, all these coast cities have been used as quarries for the construction of mosques and fortifications. The marble and granite pillars and columns, and the carved blocks of stone which formed the outside casings of the walls, have been carried away, leaving nothing but the mere skeletons of ruins as forlorn and desolate as the peasantry who find shelter beneath them. THE TEMPLE SOCIETY. Haifa, Dec. 25.—There are probably not many of your readers who have ever heard of “The Temple Society,” and yet it is a religious body numbering over 5000 members, of whom more than 300 are in America, 1000 in Palestine, and the remainder scattered over Europe, principally in Germany, Russia, and Switzerland.