It was with a view of seeing what had been done that I determined to ride over to Sefurieh and from there take a line of my own through the woods to the Bay of Acre, instead of returning to the coast by the regular road across the plain of Esdraelon. Passing Cana and the Christian village of Reineh, where there is an old well with a sculptured sarcophagus, we leave to our right a Moslem “holy place,” called Mashad, where there is a conspicuous wely, or Moslem shrine. This spot Moslem as well as Christian tradition declares to be the tomb of Jonah. This tradition is based on the fact that the prophet is said in the Bible to be of Gath-Hepher—and this site is pretty well identified with that of the modern Mashad. There can be little doubt that these Moslem welies are the modern representatives of those “high places” which the ancient Jews were so constantly punished for erecting. They seem, indeed, to differ in no very marked degree from the “holy places” of the present day. In an hour more we are galloping up the grassy slope on the side of which are the mud hovels of the modern population, whose conversion is so imminent, and the summit of which is crowned with the picturesque ruins of a crusading castle, reared upon foundations which are evidently of a far anterior date. This building is about fifty feet square, and from the top, which we reach by a dilapidated stair, we have a magnificent view of the surrounding country, the Buttauf, formerly the plain of Zebulon, at our feet—at this time of year a sheet of water—with the high range of the Jebel Safed behind, and bounding the horizon westward the sea-line of the Bay of Acre, with the wooded hills, through which lies my proposed route, intervening. On the side of the hill near the village is the church in process of restoration, and in the courtyard which has been recently built in front of it, where the rubbish mound lately stood, are no less than a dozen syenite columns, some standing to a height of twelve or fifteen feet, some prostrate, while their capitals and entablatures are strewn around. A small chapel has been fitted up in one of the side aisles, where a priest from Nazareth comes every Sunday to perform mass to the Arab and his wife who are left in charge during the week, and who at present form the whole congregation. The priest told me that many more handsome columns were in a subterranean part of the church which had recently been discovered, but which I could not visit, on account of débris. He also pointed out the fact that the pillars which supported the arches were divided into five sections, so built that they might actually enclose the ancient walls of the house of Joachim and Anna.