Seven and a half miles north of Mejdel is the site of the famous city of Ashdod, now only a mud village of moderate size, on the eastern slope of a knoll which is covered with loose sandy soil and hedged in with prickly pear. On this knoll the old city no doubt stood, and though its elevation is not great, it commands the surrounding land, which accounts for the siege of twenty-nine years by Psammetichus, that Ashdod underwent. On the south is a small white mosque, a water-wheel, and the fine Khân which has fallen into ruins within the last thirty years. There is a great mud-pond on the east, with palms near it, and to the south a marsh, fig gardens and numerous sycamore trees. The corn-lands are wide and fertile, but the place has no antiquities beyond a few bad coins and gems. The ever-rolling sand-dunes have here encroached no less than three miles, and are lapping against the village. Riding due west from Ashdod we reached the shore, at a point which seems to have been rarely visited by former travellers. There are here extensive ruins of a town, stretching along the shore, and a square fort with round corner towers, probably of Crusading date. This is no doubt the ancient port of Ashdod, mentioned in the fifth century, and the place is still used as a landing by small boats. The name which is given to this harbour as well as to the ports of Abu Zabûra, Yebna, and Ghŭzzeh, is very interesting; they are each known as El Mîneh, but the word is not Arabic. The Talmud speaks of the harbour of Caesarea as Limineh, and here we have the solution of the puzzle. The Jews were not a race of sailors; the only notices of the sea in the Bible, show the awe with which they regarded its rolling waves. They had no harbours along the coast, and apparently no word in their language for a port; thus they adopted a foreign epithet, and naturalised the Greek Limen, now further corrupted into the modern El Mîneh. One other great city occupied our attention from the Mejdel camp, namely Lachish, a place which seems to have been still known in the fourth century. We visited Umm Lags, the site proposed by Dr. Robinson, and could not but conclude that no ancient or important city ever stood there, nor has the name any radical similarity to that of Lachish. Much nearer indeed would be the title El Hesy, applying to a large ancient site with springs, near the foot of the hills, about in the proper position for Lachish. The modern name means “a water-pit,” and, if it is a corruption of Lachish, it would afford a second instance of a change which is well known to have taken place in the case of Michmash--the K being changed to guttural H. The distance from Beit Jibrin to Tell el Hesy, is not much greater than that given by the Onomasticon for Lachish, while the proximity of Eglon (’Ajlân), and the position south of Beit Jibrin, on a principal road, near the hills, and by one of the only springs in the plain, all seem to be points strongly confirming this view.