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ARTHUK W. SUTTON, ESQ., J. P., F.L.S., ON 



and other Greek and Roman writers, but no details are given 

 of its history. We are informed that it was noted for its men of 

 learning, and that it was the " Alexandria of Decapolis." It 

 does not seem to correspond to any Old Testament site. The 

 Crusaders made a campaign against it, in trying to form an 

 eastern frontier for the Holy Land. 



Exactly how or when the city was destroyed is not known. 

 After going down in the Mohammedan invasion, it was probably 

 left deserted for hundreds of years, because the state of the 

 ruins after seven hundred years points clearly to the action 

 of an earthquake and not the hand of man. An Arabian 

 geographer, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, describes 

 Gerasa as deserted. Hence we have here a Greek or Roman 

 town standing as it was left seven hundred, if not twelve hundred, 

 years ago. 



High above the Peribolos or Forum, on a rocky knoll, sup- 

 ported and surrounded by a massive substructure, stands the 

 ruin of a great temple, whose superb situation commands the 

 whole town and looks straight north along the colonnaded 

 street. The walls of this temple are 7| feet thick. 



Outside the city, says Dr. Green, there are the remains of a 

 naumachia or theatre, for the representation of naval spectacles, 

 consisting of a vast stone reservoir 700 feet by 300 feet, surrounded 

 by tiers of seats and supplied by conduits. 



Not very far off is the site of the great and important city of 

 Rabbath-Ammon, the ancient capital of the Ammonites, who, 

 with the Moabites, are said to have been descended from Lot. 

 These two nations drove out the gigantic aboriginal inhabitants 

 east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan. Rabbath-Ammon is 

 first mentioned in Deut. iii, 11, as the place where the "iron 

 bedstead " of the giant King of Bashan was deposited ; but it 

 is celebrated chiefly for the siege against it by the Israelites 

 under Joab, when Uriah the Hittite was slain — the blackest 

 spot in David's history. 



There are the ruins of a theatre in good preservation, with 

 forty-eight tiers of seats calculated to hold 6000 people, and so 

 admirably arranged that, as may be tested to this day, ordinary 

 conversation on the stage could be distinctly heard on the 

 topmost semicircle. 



Joab first took " the city of the waters " — that is, evidently, 

 the lower town, along the banks of the river. But the citadel 

 still held out, therefore messengers were sent to David asking 



