Haifa, March 20.—When we had sufficiently satisfied our curiosity with regard to the dolmens, which I described in my last letter, the sheik who was our guide disappeared suddenly over the edge of the plateau on which they stood, down what seemed to be a precipice of black basalt. His reply to our anxious inquiry as to whither he was leading us—“to very old stones, with writing on them”—was a talismanic utterance which at once overcame all hesitation. On such occasions there rises in the mind of the cold and weary and half-starving traveller (and I answered to this description at the moment) visions of possible Moabite stones, trilingual inscriptions, and all the other prizes which reward successful Palestine research. I felt, therefore, ready to make any plunge into unknown depths that he might choose to suggest, but certainly this was a bad one. Some two thousand feet below us, distant not more than seven miles, gleamed the still waters of the Sea of Galilee. We stood on the upper edge of one of the branches of the Wady Samak, which leads down to it. To our left, scarce a mile off, we could see the old crusading ruin of the Kasr Berdawil, or Baldwin's Castle, perched on a promontory the sides of which are sheer precipices, thus offering to the old warriors a position of magnificent strength. It is one of the least known of the Crusading strongholds, but I was assured by a friend, who, so far as I know, is the only traveller who has visited it, that beyond a few crumbling walls there was absolutely nothing to be seen, so, as I had better game in prospect, I did not turn aside to it, as I had originally intended, but resolutely prepared to risk my neck amid the basalt blocks of the cliff down which the sheik was now disappearing. Fortunately, though it was a bad descent, it was not a long one. I never could understand how my horse managed it, for I had left him to take care of himself, finding my own legs a safer method of descent; but in these lonely regions the instinct of not getting separated from the rest of the party is as strong with animals as with men, and they may generally be trusted to follow their companions.