with ruins, and on the eastern side are the remains of an ancient castle. The work is not Moslem, Christian, or Roman; the stones are unhewn blocks, and appear to date from a remote period.
A large district east and south-east of the Sea of Galilee was called Decapolis, or the region of the Ten Cities. The name occurs frequently in Josephus and other writers, and three times in the Gospels. Immediately after the conquest of Syria by the Romans (B.C. 65), ten cities appear to have been rebuilt, partially colonised, and endowed with peculiar privileges. One of the cities was Scythopolis, west of the Jordan; the others included Gadara, Geraza, Philadelphia, Pella, &c., all on the east. The region, once so populous and prosperous, is now almost without inhabitants; and the few families that do remain—in Scythopolis, Gadara, and Canatha—live amid the crumbling ruins of palaces, and in the cavernous recesses of old tombs.
Herr Schumacher has explored Abila of the Decapolis (now Tell Abil), and Gadara (at Umm Keis), and Pella (Fahil).
Pella—situated just opposite Beisan, on the other side of the Ghor—is the city to which the Christian believers fled when Titus advanced to besiege Jerusalem. Epiphanius says that "they removed because they had been forewarned by Christ himself of the approaching siege." Seventy years later (A.D. 135) when Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as a Roman city, and changed its name to Ælia, the Christians again left it and sought refuge in this elegant city of Pella in the Jordan valley. Dr Merrill is inclined to think that Christ himself had been in Pella (for we know that he visited Perea), and met with such favour and success as to make the city a fitting asylum for his followers. Herr Schumacher, after describing a rock-cut chamber of rectangular shape, having a ceiling cut in the shape of a cross vault, with two pillars on the southern and northern walls,
