When first I reached Palestine in 1872, the Survey party were at work at Shechem, thirty miles north of Jerusalem. Sergeant Black and Sergeant Armstrong, whose names should be specially recorded among those who worked at the survey, because they were longest employed, and because their ability was conspicuous in framing a plan of operations suited to the peculiar requirements, had made good progress, with the aid of Mr. C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake, left in charge when Captain Stewart came home ill. They had carried the work from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and thence along the mountains to Shechem, in six months, and the hill country of Benjamin, which I afterwards examined, was thus surveyed before I reached Palestine. This part of Judea, though presenting immense difficulties to the surveyor, which had been overcome by patience and toil, did not yield much of great interest beyond Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake’s discovery of a Jewish tomb-inscription, and the identification of several lost Hebrew cities. The site of Bethel, famous as it is in Bible history, is only that of a small village, on a ridge which, even for Judea, is remarkably barren and rocky. Here truly the wanderer who dreamed of angels could find nought save a stone for his pillow; but the long vista of the Jericho plain, seen over the peaks and ridges of the desert of Judah, might even now, by some modern Lot, be likened to the “garden of the Lord,” so green do its pastures look in spring, set in the stony ring of barren hills. Not far thence we one day crossed the great gorge of Michmash, where was the fortress of the Philistines that Jonathan assaulted. We were able to lead our horses down from ledge to ledge, following the strata, to the bottom of the valley on its south side; but on the north towered the cliff of Bozez (“the shining”), which the Hebrew hero scaled. Here no horse could find a footing, and climbing up to visit the hermit’s caves, I was able to judge the effort which would be necessary to scale the whole height and then to fight at the top. No doubt the garrison must have regarded Jonathan’s feat as practically impossible.