On the 15th of April we marched fourteen miles south to Gaza, over rolling corn-lands with patches of red sandy cliff, and by brown mud villages, with white domes, and large ponds in which the little red oxen were standing knee-deep. Riding up a low ridge, we came upon a great avenue of very ancient olives, which stretches south for four miles to the houses of Gaza. This ancient city, the capital of Philistia, is very picturesquely situated, having a fine approach down the broad avenue from the north, and rising on an isolated hill a hundred feet above the plain. On the higher part of the hill are the Governor’s house, the principal mosque (an early Crusading church), and the bazaars. The green mounds traceable round this hillock are probably remains of the ancient walls of the city. Gaza bristles with minarets, and has not less than twenty wells. The population is now eighteen thousand, including sixty or seventy houses of Greek Christians. The Samaritans in the seventh century seem to have been numerous in Philistia, near Jaffa, Ascalon, and Gaza. Even as late as the commencement of the present century, they had a synagogue in this latter city, but are now no longer found there. There are two large suburbs of mud cabins on lower ground, to the east and north-east, making four quarters to the town in all. East of the Serai is the reputed tomb of Samson, whom the Moslems call ’Aly Merwân or “Aly the enslaved.” On the north-west is the mosque of Hâshem, the father of the Prophet. The new mosque, built some forty years since, is full of marble fragments, from ancient buildings which were principally found near the sea-shore. The town is not walled, and presents the appearance of a village grown to unusual size; the brown cabins rise on the hillside row above row, and the white domes and minarets, with numerous palms, give the place a truly Oriental appearance. The bazaars are large and are considered good. Riding round the town to the east, I found the Moslem inhabitants celebrating a festival, in tents pitched in the cemeteries, where black-robed women, wearing the Egyptian veil, sat in circles, singing and clapping their hands to keep time. On the south-east of the city is a very conspicuous isolated hill called El Muntâr, “the watch-tower;” and on it another place sacred to ’Aly, a little white building, with three domes, surrounded with graves. This is traditionally the hill to which Samson carried the gates of Gaza, and a yearly festival of the Moslems is held here. An interesting discovery was made in 1879 at Tell el’Ajjûl south of Gaza. A statue, fifteen feet high, was found buried in the sand, representing an old man with a beard. There can be little doubt that it is the statue of Marnas, the Jupiter of Gaza, whose temple was still standing near the city in the fifth century of our era.