Soon after leaving Ramleh the road begins to ascend and the country grows wilder. We are approaching the elevated plateau on which Jerusalem stands, two thousand six hundred feet above the level of the sea. Up to the time of David the whole maritime plain over which we have been riding was held by the Philistines. The defiles and passes we are now about to enter formed the marches—the debatable ground, the possession of which was contested inch by inch during successive generations. A little to the north of us stood the city of Ekron, whither the Ark of God was brought from Ashdod. We can trace the path by which the milch-kine, yoked to the new cart on which the Ark was laid, left their calves behind them and “went along the highway, lowing as they went, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left; and the lords of the Philistines went after them unto the border of Beth-shemesh. And they of Beth-shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley: and they lifted up their eyes, and saw the Ark, and rejoiced to see it.”[12] The names of Ekron and Beth-shemesh are easily identified in Akir and Ain-shems. As we saw the green slopes of the hills with their fields of wheat and barley, and the labourers in the busy light of the declining sun, it was easy to realise the whole scene. Tracing the history step by step and noting how the localities exactly fell into the requirements of the narrative, it was impossible not to be struck by the precise accordance of the one with the other. The land and the book formed a perfect illustration of one another. [Illustration: LYDDA.] Two traditional sites are now passed—El Latron, the name of which is said to be derived from its having been the abode of the penitent thief, and Amwâs, the ancient Nicopolis, long regarded as the EMMAUS of the New Testament.[13] Though the identity of the latter site was for a thousand years unquestioned, and has recently been reasserted by the high authority of Dr. Robinson, it seems to me to be quite untenable. Its distance from Jerusalem is too great. The evangelist fixes it at “three score furlongs;” Amwâs is a hundred and sixty. Robinson assumes an error in the MSS., for which there is no authority; nor is it credible that the disciples should have visited Jerusalem and returned hither in the same day, as the narrative requires, making a distance of forty miles. [Illustration: AMWÁS, OR NICOPOLIS, THE TRADITIONAL SITE OF EMMAUS.]