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BURIED CITES AND BIBLE COUNTRIES.

feast were to be seen at both places. General uncertainty attended his footsteps throughout.

The people who did most to bring about this confusion in regard to the sacred sites were the Crusaders. Knights and priests of the twelfth century, arriving in Palestine, were strangers in the country, and although enthusiastic they were ignorant and illiterate. They used to land at Athlit, and journey thence to Nazareth or to Jerusalem, fixing as many places en route as they could. Athlit itself they regarded as the ancient Tyre! Meon, the home of Nabal, they fixed close by, because Mount Carmel was not far off, and Abigail came from Carmel. They did not recognise that the Carmel of Abigail and Nabal was a city in the south of Judah. Knowing that Capernaum was a fishing town, they placed it on the Mediterranean coast and identified it with a fortress of their day, now the village called Kefr Lam. These three places, which were shown to the religious devotee as soon as he landed, are in reality many days' journey apart. Caipha (Haifa) was shown as a place where Simon Peter used to fish. Shiloh was south of Bethel, and was in fact the mountain now called Nebi Samwil. Sychar and Shechem were one and the same place. "The Quarantania or Kuruntul mountain" (says Conder) "has, from the twelfth century down, been shown as the place where our Lord retired for the forty days of fasting in the desert. Near to it the Crusaders also looked for the 'exceeding high mountain' whence the Tempter showed our Lord 'all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them' (Matt. iv. 8). Saewulf tells us that the site of this mountain was 3 miles from Jericho. Fetellus places it north of that town and 2 miles from Quarantania. The measurements bring us to the remarkable cone called the Raven's Nest. The story is wonderfully descriptive of the simplicity of men's minds in the twelfth century, for the summit of the 'exceeding high mountain,' whence