Haifa, Feb. 2.—I narrated in my last letter the disappointment I experienced when, after making a pilgrimage to the north end of the Lake of Tiberias for the express purpose of seeing some stones covered with inscriptions and pictorial representations, said to be in the possession of the agent of a rich Arab proprietor, I found their owner gone and the relics locked up in a building of which he had taken the key, and all ingress to which was impossible. The Bedouin sheik whom I had picked up as a guide at a neighboring encampment, seeing my chagrin, comforted me by the assurance that if I would only follow him he would take me to a place where I could find others which were quite as good. I mounted my horse, therefore, in somewhat better spirits, as from his description of the locality I knew it must have escaped the attention of all former travellers, and consoled myself by the reflection that a discovery of some importance might still be in store for me. Our way took us due north across the fertile plain of the Butêha, an alluvial expanse about two miles in length by one in breadth, formed by the detritus which, in the course of ages, has been washed down the Jordan, and the winter torrents which rush into the plain down the wadys that descend from the elevated plateau of Jaulan. The Butêha is not unlike the plain of Genesareth. Both are well watered and extremely fertile. Butêha has the largest and most prominent brooks, Genesareth the most numerous and abundant springs. The old traveller, Burckhardt, says that the Arabs of the Butêha have the earliest cucumbers and melons in all this region. It was on this plain, at the foot of the hill or “tell” we were now approaching, that Josephus fought the Romans under Sylla, concerning which battle he says: “I would have performed great things that day if a certain fate had not been my hinderance, for the horse on which I rode and upon whose back I fought fell into a quagmire and threw me to the ground, and I was bruised on my wrist and was carried into a certain village called Cuphernome or Capernaum.”