Israelites both mean the same--great distance. With their slow camels

and asses, it was about a seven days' journey from Dan to Beersheba---say

a hundred and fifty or sixty miles--it was the entire length of their

country, and was not to be undertaken without great preparation and much

ceremony. When the Prodigal traveled to "a far country," it is not

likely that he went more than eighty or ninety miles. Palestine is only

from forty to sixty miles wide. The State of Missouri could be split

into three Palestines, and there would then be enough material left for

part of another--possibly a whole one. From Baltimore to San Francisco

is several thousand miles, but it will be only a seven days' journey in

the cars when I am two or three years older.--[The railroad has been

completed since the above was written.]--If I live I shall necessarily

have to go across the continent every now and then in those cars, but one

journey from Dan to Beersheba will be sufficient, no doubt. It must be

the most trying of the two. Therefore, if we chance to discover that

from Dan to Beersheba seemed a mighty stretch of country to the

Israelites, let us not be airy with them, but reflect that it was and is

a mighty stretch when one can not traverse it by rail.

The small mound I have mentioned a while ago was once occupied by the

Phenician city of Laish. A party of filibusters from Zorah and Eschol

captured the place, and lived there in a free and easy way, worshiping

gods of their own manufacture and stealing idols from their neighbors

whenever they wore their own out. Jeroboam set up a golden calf here to

fascinate his people and keep them from making dangerous trips to

Jerusalem to worship, which might result in a return to their rightful

543

The Innocents Abroad