The Cave at Khureitfûn is the most remarkable cavern in the country. The entrance is reached by creeping along a very narrow ledge, on the side of a high precipice of hard limestone, in a magnificent desert gorge. The entrance is double, and is protected by a great block of stone. The narrow passage leads to a great circular hall cut in rock, and, from this, other narrow winding passages run yet farther into the heart of the mountain; the windings are extremely intricate, leading from one chamber to another, the farthest being some 200 yards from the entrance. A whole day was spent in planning the place. For 100 feet I followed a long burrow, so narrow and low that I could only just drag myself along it on my hands and knees, with a candle in one hand; huge bats flew into my face and more than once extinguished the light, but I succeeded in reaching the very end, and in searching out the extremity of every other passage in this extraordinary cavern. It appears probable that the whole of the caves and passages are formed by water action; here and there, in the outermost chambers, the walls have been shaped with a pick, but the general character is not unlike other water-worn caverns in limestone country. In the twelfth century the Crusaders fixed upon the Khureitûn Cave, with their usual hasty judgment, as being the Cave of Adullam, no doubt because it was the most remarkable place of the kind that they could find. The early Christians, however, had been better informed, and the true site, as will be seen later, is to be sought in the Valley of Elah, many miles west of Bethlehem; for Josephus tells us that the cave was at the city of Adullam, which was in the low hills west of the watershed mountains (Ant. vi. 12, 2), and this agrees with the use of the word “hold” or “fortress” in connection with the cave (1 Chron. xi. 16). David’s stronghold, moreover, was not in the “land of Judah” (1 Sam. xxii. 5), but on the border of the Philistine country.