We can still trace the site of Jericho in the hollow of the deep valley through which the Jordan flows into the Dead Sea. Its ruins lie round about the ’Ain es-Sultân, a spring of warm water which gushes into an ancient basin, overgrown with reeds and brushwood, among which the birds flutter and watch the fish in the water below. Above towers the huge mass of Mount Qarantel, while the black soil which forms the floor of the hollow is covered with small artificial mounds of earth, and is thick with the decayed relics of a tropical vegetation. In the coldest weather it is still warm at Jericho; in summer the damp heat is stifling, and the mosquitoes are innumerable. Now it is given over to idle Bedâwin, but in the old days when the country was filled with an industrious population, it was as ‘the garden of the Lord.’ No place in Palestine was more fertile, and it commanded the ford that led across the Jordan from the east. The destruction of Jericho opened to Joshua the way into Canaan. Laden with its spoil, the Israelites matched westward, up into the mountains and through the pass of Michmash towards Beth-el. Beth-el itself was too strong to be attacked. But a neighbouring town, whose later name of Ai, ‘the ruined heap,’ was a lasting record of its fate, was not so fortunate. The Israelites took it by means of an ambuscade, and the same merciless treatment was dealt out to it that had been dealt to Jericho. The inhabitants were all massacred, ‘only the cattle and the spoil Israel took for a prey unto themselves.’ The conquest of Ai, however, had not been easy. The Canaanites had made a brave defence, and the invaders had at first suffered a check. The cause was discovered in the Israelitish camp. A Jew, Achan or Achar, had hidden under his tent some of the booty of Jericho which ought to have been either destroyed or dedicated to Yahveh. ‘A goodly Babylonish garment,’ two hundred shekels of silver, and a tongue-like wedge of gold fifty shekels in weight, were the objects which he had coveted and concealed. But the order had been issued that all objects of metal should be given to the tabernacle, and that all things else should be burned with fire. Achan accordingly was condemned to be stoned to death, and along with him the rest of his family as well as his oxen, his asses, and his sheep. Then the bodies were burnt, and a heap of stones piled over them in memory of the event.