(1.) “the village of Mambertal.”—“Mambertal” for Mamre, by which name Hebron also was known (Gen. xii, 18; xxxv, 27), and was probably so called after Mamre the Amorite, the friend of Abraham (Gen. xiv, 13). Sir John Mandevile’s tradition of the Dry Tree (_Voyages and Travels_, etc.) as it was related to him, agrees almost word for word with the tale in the text, except that Sir John saw an oak, whereas Schiltberger’s tree was called by the Infidels “carpe” (Sir John writes Dirpe), and selvy is the Turkish for cypress. Commentators on the Holy Scriptures have said that plains of Mamre (Gen. xiii, 18; xviii, 1) is a mis-translation for oaks of Mamre, but the Turkish for oak is meyshe. The great tree seen by Robinson in 1838 (_Biblical Researches_, etc., ii, 81) was an oak; it measured 22-1/2 feet in circumference in the lower part, the branches extending over a diameter of 89 feet. It stood solitarily near a well in the midst of a field, and was sound and in a thriving state. A long and comprehensive note on the Arbre Sec or Arbre Sol, will be found in Yule’s Marco Polo, i, 132.—ED. (2.) “it is well taken care of.”—The distance from Hebron to Jerusalem, as given in chapter 40, is correct (Raumer, _Palæstina_, etc., 201); so is the statement that Hebron was the chief city of the Philistines, for Josephus (_Wars_, etc., xii, 10) says that it was a royal city of the Canaanites. “Carpe” may have indicated the caroub or locust tree (_Die charube von Kufin_; see Rosen, _Die Patriarchengruft zu Hebron_, in _Zeitschrift f. allg. Erdk._, neue Folge, xiv, 426), or the turpentine tree, which Josephus and others have stated grew in those parts, where a small and sterile valley still bears the significant name of Sallet-el-Boutmeh—Place of the Turpentine tree. In course of time, the turpentine tree of Josephus became confounded with Abraham’s oak, mentioned in the Bible, which the Russian pilgrim Daniel (Noroff, _Péler. en T. S._, 77) says he found in leaf, and might have been a huge tree of the sort noticed by Robinson. The tree seen by Schiltberger must have been of another kind, because it was withered; he could not otherwise have transmitted to us the prophecy so encouraging to our own desires, and in accordance with the presentiments of the Infidels themselves, that the day will come when they shall be expelled from the holy places.