Looking across the valley, attention is arrested by the numerous conical hills rising from the flat table-land which is supported by the mountain chain. Many of these attain considerable height, not only from the plain below, but from the plateau on which they rest. Of these, one holds a conspicuous place in early Hebrew history. Balak, king of Moab, alarmed at the rapid and irresistible progress of the children of Israel, and despairing of checking their advance, sends across the Euphrates to bring thence the seer whose incantations may seduce or overcome the mighty God who had given them the victory. He knew not that— “God is not a man that He should lie; Neither the son of man that He should repent: Hath He said, and shall He not do it? Or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good ... Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, Neither is there any divination against Israel.” He had brought the seer to the top of Pisgah, whence he might command a view of the encampment of Israel in the plain below and of the whole promised land. Vain are all sacrificial rites, all magical arts, all offers of wealth and power. He who was brought to curse can only bless, “And Balaam rose up and went to his place: and Balak also went his way.”[117] Yet again we find Israel encamped in the plains of Moab, on the eastern bank of the Jordan. Their forty years’ wanderings are ended. They are now to go in and possess the good land. But their heroic leader is not to go before them. Though “a hundred and twenty years old, his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.”[118] He might, therefore, have looked forward to a further period of active service; at least he might have hoped to reap with his own hand the harvest for which he had toiled and waited so many weary years. But it was not to be. He must climb “the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho”—the very height upon which Balaam had stood. There “the Lord showed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, and all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea, and the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, unto Zoar.”[119] Ignorance of the topography of Palestine has led many to conclude that this extended vision was physically impossible, to be accounted for only by miracle; or by the deniers of miracles, to be rejected as mythical and legendary. So far is this from being the case, that modern travellers, who have been permitted to “Stand where Moses stood, And view the landscape o’er,” have described the scene in words which only fill up the outline of the inspired narrative. The whole extent of Palestine lies stretched out like a map from the snowy summit of Hermon on the north, to the Mediterranean on the west, and the granite peaks of Arabia on the south.