indeed, derive the name Hebron from Chaber, comrade or friend; but Hebron
may mean "confederation of cities," just as its other name, Kiriath-arba,
may possibly mean Tetrapolis. The distance from Jerusalem to Hebron depends
upon the views of the traveller. You can easily get to Hebron in four hours
and a half by the new carriage road, but the distance, though less than
twenty miles, took me fourteen hours, from five in the morning till seven
at night. Most travellers turn aside to the left to see the Pools of
Solomon, and the grave of Rachel lies on the right of the highroad itself.
It is a modern building with a dome, and the most affecting thing is the
rough-hewn block of stone worn smooth by the lips of weeping women. On the
opposite side of the road is Tekoah, the birthplace of Amos; before you
reach it, five miles more to the north, you get a fine glimpse also of
Bethlehem, the White City, cleanest of Judean settlements. Travellers tell
you that the rest of the road is uninteresting. I did not find it so. For
the motive of my journey was just to see those "uninteresting" sites,
Beth-zur, where Judas Maccabeus won such a victory that he was able to
rededicate the Temple, and Beth-zacharias, through whose broad valley-roads
the Syrian elephants wound their heavy way, to drive Judas back on his
precarious base at the capital.

It is somewhat curious that this indifference to the Maccabean sites is not
restricted to Christian tourists. For, though several Jewish travellers
passed from Jerusalem to Hebron in the Middle Ages, none of them mentions
the Maccabean sites, none of them spares a tear or a cheer for Judas
Maccabeus. They were probably absorbed in the memory of the Patriarchs and
of King David, the other and older names identified with this district.
Medieval fancy, besides, was too busy with peopling Hebron with myths to
waste itself on sober facts. Hebron, according to a very old notion, was
the place where Adam and Eve lived after their expulsion from Eden; it was
from Hebron's red earth that the first man was made. The _Pirke di Rabbi