long grass existed to hide any ruins. But in all that plain he found no ruin, except the old monastery of St John and a little hermit's cave.
This description leaves out of account a remarkable group of tells, or mounds of earth and rubbish, strewn over with ruins, existing in the neighbourhood of Jericho. They are seven in number, and one of them is not far from Elisha's Fountain, now called Ain es Sultan. One would imagine that the exploration of these mounds might yield valuable results; but nobody undertakes the work. It is true that some excavations made by Sir Charles Warren only proved the existence of sun-dried bricks; and because the mounds occur generally where the soil is alluvial, Conder regards them as piles of refuse bricks, and nothing more; but Sir J. W. Dawson, on visiting the place, noticed numerous flint chips in the mound, and Sir C. Warren, when presiding at my Guildford lecture, publicly expressed the opinion that many small objects of great interest would probably be found if the stuff were sifted.
But if the ruins of the Cities of the Plain are not discoverable, their names appear to linger in the district, slightly disguised as Arabic words, and applying to portions of the ground.
Conder justly remarks that the cities would probably be situated near fresh-water springs, and the great spring of 'Ain Feshkhah, on the north-west of the Dead Sea, is a probable site for one of them. The great bluff not far south of the spring is called Tubk 'Amriyeh by the Bedawin, and the neighbouring valley Wady 'Amriyeh. This word is radically identical with the Hebrew Gomorrah, or Amorah as it is spelt in one passage (Gen. x. 19), meaning, according to some authorities, "depression," according to others, "cultivation."
Admah means "red earth," a description which would hardly apply to the ground near the Dead Sea. But there
