I.

RESEARCHES IN PALESTINE.

BY THE EDITOR.

Compiled from various communications received at different times from the Rev. ELI SMITH and Rev. S. WOLCOTT.

(With a Map of the Country around the Sources of the Jordan.)

THE first portion of the following article has already appeared in print; but it has been judged advisable to introduce it here, with several additional circumstances interwoven; partly for the sake of continuity and completeness, and partly for the sake of the accompanying Map, which is now first published.

In the Preface to the Biblical Researches in Palestine, it was stated, that the Rev. Eli Smith was about to return to his station at Beirût, taking with him instruments of the best kind in order to verify our former observations, and prosecute further researches in parts of the country not visited by us; and that I hoped to be the medium of communicating his subsequent observations to the public. Mr. Smith's return took place in April, 1841; but the state of confusion and anarchy and war since existing in Mount Lebanon and the adjacent regions, by which the mission has of course been greatly affected, has also hitherto cut off all opportunity for travelling and personal observation on his part. The scenes of desolation and bloodshed, which have passed in the interval before the eyes of the missionaries, have been graphically described by Mr. Smith and others in their letters, published from time to time in the Missionary Herald, particularly in the numbers for May and June, 1842.

In the mean time others have been doing the work of surveying the Holy Land much more extensively, and perhaps more effectually, than could in any case have been done by a single individual. It may be recollected, that when the British fleet was withdrawn