ever been found to apply to its condition in the very next.

Bethlehem, where the divine Messias was born, is a large village inhabited
promiscuously by Christians and Mussulmans, who agree in nothing but their
detestation of the tyranny by which they are both unmercifully oppressed.
The locality of the sacred manger is occupied by an elegant church,
ornamented by the pious offerings of all the nations of Europe. It is
not our intention to enter into a more minute discussion of those old
traditions, by which the particular places rendered sacred by the
Redeemer's presence are still marked out for the veneration of the
faithful. They present much vagueness, mingled with no small portion of
unquestionable truth. At all events, we must not regard them in the same
light in which we are compelled to view the story that claims for Hebron
the possession of Abraham's tomb, and attracts on this account the
veneration both of Nazarenes and Moslems.

To the north-east of Jerusalem, in the large and fertile valley called
El-Gaur, and watered by the Jordan, we find the village of Rah, the
ancient Jericho, denominated by Moses the City of Palms. This is a name
to which it is still entitled; but the groves of opobalsamum, or balm
of Moses, have long disappeared; nor is the neighbourhood any longer
adorned with those singular flowers known among the Crusaders by the
familiar appellation of Jericho roses. A little farther south two rough
and barren chains of hills encompass with their dark steeps a long basin
formed in a clay soil mixed with bitumen and rock-salt. The water
contained in this hollow is impregnated with a solution of different
saline substances, having lime, magnesia, and soda for their base,
partially neutralized with muriatic and sulfuric acid. The salt which it
yields by evaporation is about one-fourth, of its weight. The bituminous
matter rises from time to time from the bottom of the lake, floats on