The crowd was now so thick that we could scarcely move without treading on some one. On the right were the women in gay-coloured dresses with white veils, the married ones wearing the Bethlehem cap. On the left were the men, who had removed their turbans, but still retained their cotton skull-caps. At five in the morning, after seven hours of heat and discomfort, we left the Patriarch still engaged in his arduous office. East of Bethlehem is a narrow plain or open valley, bare and treeless, with white stony slopes and a few crumbling ruins. One of these ruins is a large building called Sîr el Ghanem, “the sheep-fold,” apparently an ancient monastery; a second site is called “the Church of the Flocks,” a subterranean Greek chapel, with mediæval ruins above, first mentioned in Crusading chronicles. It is here that Migdal Eder, “the Tower of the Flock,” is supposed by Jerome to have stood, where, according to the Jews, Messiah was first to appear; and it is on this plain, according to tradition, that the angelic messenger appeared to the shepherds, and that the Gloria in Excelsis was first sung. On the 5th of November we marched across the Shepherds’ Plain and entered the terrible wilderness which stretches above the Dead Sea on the west, and creeps up almost to the vines and olive-groves of Bethlehem. Two remarkable places may be noticed south-east of Bethlehem at the entrance of this desert; namely, Herodium and the Cave of Khureitûn. The first is a great conical mound on the north side of the valley which runs down from the so-called Solomon’s Pools to the Dead Sea. In the scenery south of Jerusalem, and in views of the country round Bethlehem, this mountain forms a most remarkable feature. It is commonly called, by Christians, “the Frank Mountain,” from a fifteenth-century tradition that it was defended by Franks, for a long time, against the Saracens, after the loss of Jerusalem. By natives it is called Jebel Fureidîs, “Hill of the little Paradise,” possibly a corruption of its old name, Herodium. It was here that Herod the Great built his summer palace, and also his tomb. There is a large reservoir on the flat ground at the foot of the cone, with a central fountain once fed by an aqueduct from the spring at Etam, and near it are buildings which resemble, very closely, those attributable to Herod at Masada. The cone rises 400 feet above this platform. It is truncated, and surrounded by a circular wall, on which are four round towers. On arriving at the summit one looks down into a sort of crater 290 feet in diameter, full of debris. The view from the top is a fine one, with a long succession of barren hills, and the blue waters of the Dead Sea, and the precipices of Moab beyond. The architecture is of great interest as the most perfect specimen of this early date in Palestine.