The valley is well watered, and is about a quarter of a mile wide. A little east of the city there are two natural bays or amphitheatres opposite to each other in the mountains. Here the tribes of Israel may have been gathered while the priests chanted the curses of the law from Ebal and the blessings from Gerizim. (Joshua viii: 30-35.) The cliffs were sounding-boards and sent the loud voices of blessing and cursing out over the multitude so that all could hear. It seems as if it were mainly the echo of the cursing of Ebal that greets us as we ride around the fierce little Mohammedan city of Nablus on Friday afternoon, passing through the open and dilapidated cemeteries where the veiled women are walking and gossiping away their holiday. The looks of the inhabitants are surly and hostile. The children shout mocking ditties at us, reviling the "Nazarenes." We will not ask our dragoman to translate the words that we catch now and then; it is easy to guess that they are not "fit to print." Our camp is close beside a cemetery, near the eastern gate of the town. The spectators who watch us from a distance while we dine are numerous; and no doubt they are passing unfavourable criticisms on our table manners, and on the Frankish custom of permitting one unveiled lady to travel with three husbands. The population of Nablus is about twenty-five thousand. It has a Turkish governor, a garrison, several soap factories, and a million dogs which howl all night. At half-past six the next morning we set out on foot to climb Mount Ebal, which is three thousand feet high. The view from the rocky summit sweeps over all Palestine, from snowy Hermon to the mountains round about Jerusalem, from Carmel to Nebo, from the sapphire expanse of the Mediterranean to the violet valley of the Jordan and the garnet wall of Moab and Gilead beyond. For us the view is veiled in mystery by the haze of the south wind. The ranges and peaks far away fade into cloudlike shadows. The depths below us seem to sink unfathomably. Nablus is buried in the gulf. On the summit of Gerizim, a Mohammedan _weli_, shining like a flake of mica, marks the plateau where the Samaritan Temple stood. Hilltop towns, Asiret, Talluza, Yasid, emerge like islands from the misty sea. In that great shadowy hollow to the west lie the ruins of the city of Samaria, which Caesar Augustus renamed Sebaste, in honour of his wife Augusta. If she could see the village of Sebastiyeh now she would not be proud of her namesake town. It is there that we are going to make our midday camp. King Omri acted as a wise man when he moved the capital of Israel from Shechem, an indefensible site, commanded by overhanging mountains and approached by two easy vales, to Shomron, the "watch-hill" which stands in the centre of the broad Vale of Barley.