From el-Bîreh to Baytîn (Bethel) the distance is about two miles. The path leaves the carriage road a little north of the former village and strikes off to the right through a small patch of boulders, stirrup high, to a level stretch of ground that rises a little as one comes to an interesting group of remains clustered about a spring, ‛Ayn el-Kusa‛.[203] Some well-worn rock-cut steps lead up to a rock-platform seven or eight feet above and alongside the bridle-path. The spring starts from the hillside, a little distance away, the outlet being artificially improved and a connection made with a system of trenches and pan-shaped hollows cut in different places over the top of the rock platform. Down by the path-side, under this platform, is a rock-cut chamber or cave with two heavy supporting columns hewn from the rock. The water system above is connected with it. All around the interior walls and clustering at the foot of the columns are beautiful maidenhair ferns growing out of the ooze in the bottom of the cave. A few yards farther on is another smaller cavelike room or reservoir which was never finished or connected with the spring and chamber above. Between these two caves there is a connection by a sort of trough cut in the wall-side. The intention may have been to connect the two caves as catch-reservoirs with a lower cistern or pool. This latter is suggested by a circular-shaped line of dressed stone in the very path. Many have asked what it was, whether a former pool, the top of a cistern or a shallow basin trough. The path must once have avoided it, though it now stumbles over it. Below the path little gardens catch the drainings of the spring. ----- ----- A few rods beyond this the bridle-path to Dayr Dîwân and Jericho diverges to the right (east) from the main caravan road to Baytîn and Nâblus. This main road continues to the ‛Ayn el-‛Aḳabeh (The Spring of the Descent, or, of the Steep Place) and on up the steep path to the top of the hill before Baytîn (Bethel). There are small gardens near the spring and a few old tombs in the vicinity. The people of Baytîn are Moslems. They are apt to be rude to small parties of foreigners. Though few, about half as many as in el-Bîreh, they have a name among the near-by villages for strength and fearlessness. In going into the village one passes the cemetery and the large ancient pool. North of the village is a field of large rocks that have never lacked notice since the records of history began. Shortly beyond the big rocks, which lie in the road to Nâblus, a branching path takes one towards eṭ-Ṭayyibeh, seen at good advantage from this fork in the paths on a prominent hill a little north of east. Due east from Baytîn is Burj Baytîn, five minutes away, a picturesque ruin among some fig-trees.