through the streets in the midst of the sad desolation."* (See Plate.)

The castle and city of Saphed were long a stronghold of the Crusaders; and the possession of it by the Sultan of Egypt, when, pressed by famine, it was surrendered by the Templars, gave him the command of all Galilee. At the instigation of Benedict, bishop of Marseilles, who bequeathed to it his whole fortune, the castle was rebuilt by the Templars. In the beginning of last century, though its condition was then so ruinous that its ancient figure could scarcely be determined, the multitude of ruins and the extent of its circuit, nearly a mile and a half, gave manifest proof that it had been formerly a very strong fortification. "In order to form some idea of this fortification in its present state," says Van Egmont," imagine a lofty mountain, and on its summit a round castle with walls of an incredible thickness, with a corridor, or covered passage, extending round the walls and ascended by a winding staircase. The thickness of the wall and of the corridor together was twenty of my paces. The whole was of hewn stone, and some of them eight or nine spans in length. The castle was anciently surrounded by stupendous works, moats, bulwarks, towers, &c. The stones of a large structure in the form of a dome are of astonishing magnitude. The inside is full of niches, near each of which is a small shell. An open colonnade surrounds the building, and, like the rest of the structure, is very massive and compact. From the top of the dome we had the finest prospect that can be imagined, extending over the city of Saphet, and the numerous circumjacent villages and hamlets, and the adjoining country, which is everywhere well cultivated."t When visited by Burckhardt, Saphed was a neatly-built town. The castle appeared to have undergone a thorough repair in the course of the last century; it had a good wall, and was surrounded by a broad ditch. The town was surrounded by large olive plantations and vineyards. The garrison cultivated a part of the neighbouring lands. But here, as elsewhere, the fortress has ceased from Ephraim. The same earthquake which overthrew Tiberias, levelled Saphed with the ground. Syria has for many ages been the scene of desolations wrought by the hands of man. But war is the messenger of the Lord, and

* Robinson and Smith, iii., p. 253, 254.

Van Egmont and Heyman, vol. ii., p. 43–46,

+ Burckhardt, p. 317,

warriors the executioners of his will. Before them, as human instruments, bulwarks may stand long unshaken by all their power. But when the Lord speaks the earth trembles, and at his word the strongest cities and castles, deemed impregnable, fall like the grass before the scythe of the mower. Often has the word of the Lord passed over many cities in Syria, and sometimes scarcely one has escaped. How terrible these judgments were which brought the cities to the dust, and made the defenced city a ruin, some idea may be formed from the description of the Rev. Mr. Thomson, of Beyrout, who was accompanied by Mr. Calman, and who, in Christian mercy, visited the surviving inhabitants soon after the fearful catastrophe. "All anticipations were utterly confounded when the reality burst upon our sight. Up to this moment I had refused to credit the accounts; but one frightful glance convinced me that it was not in the power of language to overstate such a ruin. Suffice it to say, that this great town, which seemed to me like a beehive four years ago, is now no more. Saphed was, but is not. The Jewish portion, containing a population of five or six thousand, was built round, and upon a very steep mountain; so steep, indeed, is the hill, and so compactly built was the town, that the roofs of the lower houses formed the streets of the ones above, thus rising like a stairway one above another; and thus, when the tremendous shock dashed every house to the ground, the first fell upon the second, the second upon the third, that upon the next, and so on to the end; and this is the true cause of the almost unprecedented destruction of life. Some of the lower houses are covered to a great depth with the ruins of many others which were above them.* Most of the houses were prostrated in a few moments; thousands of the inhabitants of Saphed (chiefly Jews) were buried beneath the ruins; the castle was utterly thrown down, and the lower houses were covered with the accumulated masses of ruins.† Fallen as the cities of Israel are, and raised up again as they shall be according to the same Divine word, and numerous as were those which earthquakes prostrated when existing in their prime, Saphed may supply an illustration how accumulated ruins are storehouses of hewn stones, all ready for reconstruction.

The castle of Baneas, so famous in the history of the Cru