444 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



could accomplish such wonders. It is impossible to dig a well in any part of the 

 city without having to pass through broken columns, walls, streets, and ruins of 

 every kind for nearly 200 feet before coming to the original soil. 



Palestine is almost as much a country of buried cities as Egypt. Some of 

 the most notable of these are the remains of cities rebuilt by Herod the Great, 

 who was an indefatigable architect and levied the most merciless taxes on his 

 people in order to build palaces and monuments to his own vanity. Among the 

 most notable of the small but magnificent cities he built were the Herodium, a 

 fortified country seat, and Machaerus, beyond the Jordan, a palace with sur- 

 rounding houses, infamous under a later Herod as the scene of the murder of 

 John the Baptist. Hebron, the City of Abraham, is now identified chiefly by 

 the cave in which, according to tradition, lay the bones of the Patriarch and his 

 family. Quite as interesting are the long buried and forgotten, but recently re- 

 covered cities of the Philistines, which, though occupying a territory only about 

 half that of St. Louis County, fill more pages in Biblical history than many num- 

 erously populated capitals. The Philistine cities are remarkable for the massive- 

 ness of their ruins, the doorways being constructed usually of three huge stones, 

 two perpendicular, and the third laid across them. Acre, in all ages celebrated 

 for its strength, was the point where Napoleon received his first check in his 

 Egyptian expedition, and the ruins of half a dozen cities here lie one above the 

 other, while Csesarea, in the time of Paul the capital of Judea, was lost for ages, 

 and recovered only through the fact of the name being retained in the local tra- 

 ditions of the Bedouins. Jericho, so famous for the concert performance of the 

 trumpets was lost from that day, and to the present can not certainly be located, 

 but is not alone in this respect, since there are hundreds of other cities in Pal- 

 estine whose history we know better than their geographical position. The most 

 notable of all, however, are the Cities of the Plains, which were destroyed by 

 volcanic eruption when the Dead Sea was formed. Deep down beneath the 

 Dead Sea ruins of great extent may still be seen, suggesting that these cities 

 were not only large but densely populated also, while the character of the sur- 

 rounding country all goes to show that the Biblical account of the catastrophe 

 was substantially correct. America is not alone in having ruins which possess 

 neither name nor history. Such wonderful cities as Nineveh and Babylon, and 

 the extensive cities of Persia and Mesopotamia are lost and found, and books 

 are printed by the score about them, while moralists muse over the fate of the 

 nations who once rejoiced in them; but it is infinitely more saddening to remem- 

 ber that ruins, covering many square miles have been found in the regions of 

 Western Asia, showing the existence of vast populations who have perished from 

 history so absolutely that not even a name or a trace survives. The land of 

 Moab, east of the Jordan, is full of cities for hundreds of miles, but not a name 

 remains to tell of those who built and inhabited them. On Mount Nebo there 

 are the ruins of a great city not laid down in any map ; who built it, who lived 

 in it are unknown. The northern part of Palestine is almost equally rich in 

 ruins which antedate the time of the Jews, but no antiquarian is able to assign 

 hem either a date or a population. — Globe- Democrat. 



