212 THE HOLY LAND. 
CHAP, afflicted by diseases which rendered them the 
V. '' 
outcasts of society ; for, in the account of the 
cure performed by our Saviour upon a dae- 
moniac in -the country of the Gadarenes, these 
tomhs are particularly alluded to; and their 
existence to this day (although they have been 
neither noticed by priests nor pilgrims, and 
have escaped the ravages of the Empress 
Helena, who would undoubtedly have shaped 
them into churches) offers strong internal evi- 
dence of the accuracy of the Evangelist who has 
recorded the transaction : " There met him out 
OF THE tomhs a man with an unclean spirit, who 
had his dwelling among the tomhsK'" In all 
the descent towards Tiberias, the soil is black, 
and seems to have resulted from the decompo- 
sition of rocks, which may be called pseudo- 
volcanic, from the resemblance they bear to 
substances that have sustained the action of 
fire. The stony fragments scattered over the 
surface are amygdaloidal and porous ; their 
cavities being occasionally occupied by mesoiype, 
or by acicular carbonate of lime : — the former 
became perfectly gelatinized after immersion in 
muriatic acid. We observed some plantations 
of tobacco which Was then in bloom ; of Indian 
(l) Mark, ch. v, 2, 3. 
