The large and flourishing stone village above us was built within the present century, and is called Umm el Fahm, “Mother of Charcoal.” It is perched on the slope of a high, conical, wooded hill, called from the little chapel on the top Sheikh Iskander, or “Chief Alexander.” The Kadi of the village, an amusing little native, who could read and write, told us many legends of this saint. He was identified apparently with Alexander the Great, for he was said to have had two ram’s horns, and also seemingly with Melchisedek, as he was reported to have had a meeting with Abraham in the valley. This district was almost entirely unknown in 1872; the cone is a volcanic crater, and small volcanic outbreaks exist west of it, and also at the edge of the Great Plain on the east. The range is covered with thickets of lentisk and spurge laurel, and on the western slopes is an open wood of good-sized oaks; but on the north a broad valley called Wâdy ’Arah, divides this range from a plateau of white chalk called “the Breezy Land” (Belâd er Rûhah), bare of trees and reaching to Carmel. The thickets of Sheikh Iskander reach southwards almost to the plain of Dothan; the Yahmûr or roebuck gives its name to one of the valleys in this region, and every kind of game abounds. On the western edge of the Great Plain there are three famous sites, Taanach, Legio, and Jokneam, concerning which a few words may be said. The ruined site of Lejjûn is the Roman Legio, a town mentioned as a military station, and an important place in the fourth century. On the maps it will be found marked as the ancient Megiddo, but this is only an instance of the very slender basis on which conclusions as to the positions of important places in Palestine have been somehow founded. There is nothing definite in the Bible as to the position of Megiddo. It is often mentioned with Taanach, the site of which, with its name unchanged, exists about four miles south of Lejjûn; but it also occurs in connection with Jezreel, and with Bethshean, east of the Great Plain. In the time of Jerome Megiddo was unknown, though the Great Plain was apparently then supposed to be the Valley of Megiddon. Dr. Robinson, in suggesting the Lejjûn site, appears to have been influenced by the Crusading chronicles, which he, as a rule, condemns. Marino Sanuto, in 1321 A.D., places Megiddo at a town which he calls Sububa, and shows it on his map as on the west side of the plain. This is evidently the present Ezbûba, a mud village two miles north of Taanach, and three miles and a quarter south-east of Lejjûn. But Crusading topography is unfortunately more remarkable than reliable, and we seek in vain for further confirmation. Dr. Robinson has relied on Jerome’s comment on a passage in Zechariah (xii. 11), “As the mourning of Hadad Rimmon in the Valley of Megiddon,” concerning which St. Jerome says that Hadad Rimmon was a town afterwards called Maximianopolis in the Valley of Megiddon;