neighbourhood of Bessum. The Kedesh of the passage is probably a site so called south of Tiberias; and the tent of Heber the Kenite would thus have been spread on the open plateau within 10 miles of the site of the battle.
The next great struggle in this plain was one upon which the Survey of Palestine has thrown some new light, enabling us to follow the fugitives in their retreat, and to fix some sites which are named in the narrative. The fruitfulness of the Great Plain has been, in our own times and all through the ages, an irresistible attraction to the Bedouin from the east of Jordan. Pressed by war or famine, they have crossed the Jordan at the fords near Beisan, poured up the Valley of Jezreel, and covered the plain with their tents and camels. The peaceful husbandmen have laboured, only to be periodically plundered and oppressed. Thus in 1870 only about a sixth part of the beautiful corn land was tilled, and the plain was black with Arab "houses of hair." But the Turks wrought a great and sudden change; they armed their cavalry with the Remington breech-loading rifle, and the Bedouin disappeared as if by magic. In 1872 nine-tenths of the plain was cultivated, nearly half with corn, the rest with millet, sesame, cotton, tobacco, and the castor-oil plant. It was, of course, to be expected that when external troubles had weakened the Government, the lawless Nomads would again encroach and levy toll as before. Accordingly, in 1877, Fendi el Fais and the Sukr Arabs once more invaded the plain and levied blackmail on the luckless peasantry. Thus it has ever been; for the history of Palestine seems constantly to repeat itself from the earliest period recorded, in a recurring struggle between the settled population and the Nomads.
Some time after the days of Barak and Deborah, the historian tells us, "the children of Israel did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord delivered them
