CONFIEMED BY RECENT DISCOVERIES IN PALESTINE AND THE EAST. 149 



The Author. — I nmst offer you ray ardent apology for venturing 

 to undertake to address you on such, a subject as I have done this 

 evening, because I quite feel how limited my knowledge of it is. 

 I have not gone very deeply into the history of Bibliology of these 

 matters. I have taken them very much as they occurred to myself, 

 after my visit to the Holy Land, and from subsequent reading in 

 the books and pamphlets to which I have given references. 



I quite admit, with the last speaker, that possibly this identifi- 

 cation of the summit of Mount Moriah may be illusory. At the 

 same time, I think there is a great deal to be said in its favour. 

 Let me mention one circumstance. The only high road which 

 Abraham could have taken in journeying south, after crossing 

 the Jordan, in order to reach Mamre (or Hebron) must have 

 passed close to Mount Moriah ; because, as I am sure Mr. Raban 

 is well aware, there was only one high road along the table land 

 of Palestine at that period, and, indeed, down to the present day, 

 and that is the road which runs along the centre of the ridge, 

 towards which the valleys coming up from the Jordan on one side 

 and the Mediterranean coast-line on the other, converge, leaving 

 a highway from north to south or south to north,— and passing by 

 Mount Moriah and the City of Jerusalem. Therefore, this Mount 

 Moriah would be, naturally, the road along which Abraham would 

 have come, and it is the road by which he would have returned, I 

 should say, towards the mount where the sacrifice was to be offered. 

 1 think this point seems to weigh very much in favour of the view 

 I have taken. 



I listened with great interest to the statements Mr. Offord has 

 made, and it occurred to me could this Danga he refers to have 

 been one of those dwarfs which Stanley, in his last journey through 

 the great forest of the Congo, came across ? There is a tribe of 

 dwarfs, I believe, referred to in ancient Egyptian history. 



Then I am sure we heard with great pleasure Dr. Gladstone's 

 account of the materials of these mounds. He has stated, amongst 

 other things, that flint knives were to be found, amongst all the 

 other materials, from the base of Tell-el-Hesy up to the summit. 

 This we might have expected, inasmuch as beds of flint are 

 extremely common amongst the Cretaceous and Eocene limestones 

 of Palestine ; and flint would, therefore, naturally be used for such 

 purposes, even when metals were brought into use for more 

 important work. 



