Soon after my arrival we received a visit from Amram, the Samaritan high-priest, accompanied by Jacob Shellaby. The high-priest was a wonderfully handsome old man, with fine aquiline features, and he wore the crimson turban distinctive of his race. He could speak no languages except Arabic and Samaritan, and his ideas were perhaps rather limited, as he pronounced Gerizim to be the highest mountain in the world. We represented to him that Ebal, close by, was nearly 230 feet higher. He allowed that it appeared to be so, but could not in reality be, because Gerizim was the highest mountain in the world. This fine old dignitary died in 1874. It was thought that his successor was to be a mere doll in the hands of Jacob Shellaby; a gentleman who is an accomplished savant. In England he appeared for some time in the character of a Samaritan prince. He supplied travellers with many ancient Samaritan hymn books, purloined, it is said, while the congregation were reverently prostrating themselves. He described to us with immense gusto the mode of preparing ancient manuscripts, by steeping a skin in coffee-grounds, and placing it for a month or two under the pillows of the diwan. Many an unwary traveller has been taken in by his false antiquities, stones, and manuscripts. It was thought that Shellaby would succeed, on the death of Amram, in obtaining the ancient roll of the law itself; but this is the Samaritan Fetish, and the young high-priest would not connive at such a deed--which would indeed have been the killing of the golden goose, as the manuscript brings in a yearly income--and excommunicated Jacob, who, after holding an heretical passover of his own on Gerizim, finally left the congregation and repaired to Jerusalem, where I saw him in 1875. Jacob Shellaby’s ideas were perhaps not far in advance of the high-priest’s. He related very naïvely his delight at the supposed discovery of a gigantic emerald, which he showed us, and which was merely a large fragment of green slag from some old glass-works. He also fully believed in the story of a cave guarded by genii, and full of gold, which might be carried away, but invariably flew back by night to its place, from wherever it might be taken. Two things struck me very much in my intercourse with the Samaritans during this first visit, and during another stay of a few days in 1875 in Nablus.