West of us rose the steep precipice of Kŭrŭntŭl, or Quarantania, the traditional mountain of Our Lord’s forty days of fasting, a cliff a thousand feet high, burrowed with caves, chapels and cells, and crowned with a fortress of the Templars. Northwards the low shelf of gleaming marl hills ran out into a curious cone, called “Raven’s Nest,” of which more hereafter; to the east was Jordan, hidden between his banks; and behind rose the fine rounded summit of Mount Nebo, and the Moabitic chain. The district around us was full of places of interest--Jericho, Gilgal, the Cities of the Plain, Jordan and the Salt Sea. The ruins were also important--Roman and later aqueducts, Crusading monasteries, and rock chapels. The results summed up in the following pages, represent the continuous labour of more than a month, during which I was in the saddle till late every day, and engaged till midnight in writing and drawing, rising before the sun began to appear behind the Moab wall. Twice again in the following years I returned to the valley, and revisited the sites round Jericho. There is only one natural position for a large town in the plains of Jericho, namely, the neighbourhood of the beautiful fountain called “the Sultan’s Spring,” near the foot of the Quarantania precipice. Nothing can well explain the choice of a new position, but the fact that Jericho was cursed by Joshua, and that the curse was fulfilled. Thus it is by the spring that we naturally place the Jericho of Joshua’s time, and this view receives confirmation from the account of the flight of the spies “to the mountain;” for if situated in the immediate vicinity of the great crag of Kŭrŭntŭl, the city was so near that the fugitives might easily have crept through the cane jungle and thorn-groves to the shelter of one of the innumerable caverns in the face of its precipices. Of ancient Jericho nothing now remains but the bright spring, and the shapeless mound above it. We can hardly wonder at this when we find that even the Jericho of Herod has disappeared, and that only a vague conjecture can be made as to the position of Thrax and Taurus, the great towers which once defended it. It seems probable that this second town stood south of ancient Jericho, and even closer to the hills, for the great aqueduct which brought water, a distance of four miles, from the fine spring at the head of the wild Kelt chasm leads just to the opening of the plain, and seems to be the only one of the numerous aqueducts which dates back to Roman times. At the mouth of the pass, also, is the rock-fort called Jubr or Chubr, in which title we may recognise, as my companion, Mr. Drake, pointed out, a relic of the name Cupros, which was given to a tower above Herod’s Jericho.