powerful sect, constantly diminishing, is now confined to this one city. Friends living in Nâblus report it as numbering but one hundred and twenty souls. The next day, as we rode up the mountain to the Passover, we passed the little graveyard that receives the different members as they fail from the congregation. It looks like a bit of plowed ground, with its simple broken surface. The Samaritans we found near the top of the mountain. There they were at their great camp-meeting of the year, living in tents near the place of sacrifice, which is just below and a little west of the very summit of Gerizim. Moslem and Christian spectators were sitting or walking about the encampment, and here and there among these were Moslem soldiers, the inevitable accompaniments of Eastern religious celebrations. ----- ----- [Illustration: ON THE WAY TO JERUSALEM FOR THE NEBY MUSA PROCESSION] [Illustration: A NEBY MUSA CONTINGENT ARRIVING WITHIN THE JAFFA GATE, JERUSALEM] As there was time before sunset, we went to the summit, a few minutes’ walk above the camp. It is a good situation for a citadel and fortification, and we found the ruins of one strewn all over the cap of the mountain. As one stands at the northeast end of the very summit, near a Moslem wily (small memorial building to some saint), the view is superb; mountains on every hand, among them Hermon, farthest yet grandest of them all. Just below us, like a velvet carpet of regular pattern, is the fertile plain of Makhna, running north and south. True to Syrian religious custom, according to which every sect or religion makes a convenient grouping of all its holy places, we have only to look around to see the celebrated places of sacred writ. Here, the Samaritans claim, is the true Shiloh, the true Bethel, and also Mount Moriah. Over there to the southeast, across the Makhna, is the little village of Rûjib, which they say is Ai, while the village of ‛Awarta is the burial-place of the sons of Aaron. Not accuracy, but convenience and monopoly, seem to guide Eastern religionists in identifying holy places. Near this the northeast end of the mountain is a portion of the foundation of the ancient Samaritan temple. A little to the south, on the east side, is a large expanse of rock, sloping westward. Here, they claim, was the true site of the tabernacle, the altar being the rock, the slope of which allowed the blood of victims to flow into the pit at the lower end. At the west end of the ruined castle are shown twelve huge stones which, they say, are the ones that Joshua took from the bed of the Jordan.[125] At the northwest side is an old pool. ----- -----