Four or five large villages, situated at half an hour's journey from one another, formed the little world of Jesus at the time of which we speak. He appears never to have visited Tiberias, a city inhabited for most part by Pagans, and the habitual residence of Antipas.[1] Sometimes, however, he wandered from his favorite region. He went by boat to the eastern shore, to Gergesa, for instance.[2] Toward the north we see him at Paneas or Caesarea Philippi,[3] at the foot of Mount Hermon. Lastly, he journeyed once in the direction of Tyre and Sidon,[4] a country which must have been marvellously flourishing at that time. In all these countries he was in the midst of Paganism.[5] At Caesarea, he saw the celebrated grotto of _Panium_, thought to be the source of the Jordan, and with which the popular belief had associated strange legends;[6] he could admire the marble temple which Herod had erected near there in honor of Augustus;[7] he probably stopped before the numerous votive statues to Pan, to the Nymphs, to the Echo of the Grotto, which piety had already begun to accumulate in this beautiful place.[8] [Footnote 1: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. ii. 3; _Vita_, 12, 13, 64.] [Footnote 2: I adopt the opinion of Dr. Thomson (_The Land and the Book_, ii. 34, and following), according to which the Gergesa of Matthew viii. 28, identical with the Canaanite town of _Girgash_ (_Gen._ x. 16, xv. 21; _Deut._ vii. 1; _Josh._ xxiv. 11), would be the site now named _Kersa_ or _Gersa_, on the eastern shore, nearly opposite Magdala. Mark v. 1, and Luke viii. 26, name _Gadara_ or _Gerasa_ instead of Gergesa. _Gerasa_ is an impossible reading, the evangelists teaching us that the town in question was near the lake and opposite Galilee. As to Gadara, now _Om-Keis_, at a journey of an hour and a half from the lake and from the Jordan, the local circumstances given by Mark and Luke scarcely suit it. It is possible, moreover, that _Gergesa_ may have become _Gerasa_, a much more common name, and that the topographical impossibilities which this latter reading offered may have caused Gadara to be adopted.--Cf. Orig., _Comment. in Joann._, vi. 24, x. 10; Eusebius and St. Jerome, _De situ et nomin. loc. hebr._, at the words [Greek: Gergesa], [Greek: Gergasei].] [Footnote 3: Matt. xvi. 13; Mark viii. 27.] [Footnote 4: Matt. xv. 21; Mark vii. 24, 31.] [Footnote 5: Jos., _Vita_, 13.] [Footnote 6: Jos., _Ant._, XV. x. 3; _B.J._, I. xxi. 3, III. x. 7; Benjamin of Tudela, p. 46, edit. Asher.] [Footnote 7: Jos., _Ant._, XV. x. 3.] [Footnote 8: _Corpus inscr. gr._, Nos. 4537, 4538, 4538 _b_, 4539.]