The Innocents Abroad


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could not defend themselves, he caused every person of them to be killed.  
Then Jehu, the good missionary, rested from his labors once more.  
We went back to the valley, and rode to the Fountain of Ain Jelud. They  
call it the Fountain of Jezreel, usually. It is a pond about one hundred  
feet square and four feet deep, with a stream of water trickling into it  
from under an overhanging ledge of rocks. It is in the midst of a great  
solitude. Here Gideon pitched his camp in the old times; behind Shunem  
lay the "Midianites, the Amalekites, and the Children of the East," who  
were "as grasshoppers for multitude; both they and their camels were  
without number, as the sand by the sea-side for multitude." Which means  
that there were one hundred and thirty-five thousand men, and that they  
had transportation service accordingly.  
Gideon, with only three hundred men, surprised them in the night, and  
stood by and looked on while they butchered each other until a hundred  
and twenty thousand lay dead on the field.  
We camped at Jenin before night, and got up and started again at one  
o'clock in the morning. Somewhere towards daylight we passed the  
locality where the best authenticated tradition locates the pit into  
which Joseph's brethren threw him, and about noon, after passing over a  
succession of mountain tops, clad with groves of fig and olive trees,  
with the Mediterranean in sight some forty miles away, and going by many  
ancient Biblical cities whose inhabitants glowered savagely upon our  
Christian procession, and were seemingly inclined to practice on it with  
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