Samaria stood a disastrous siege, once, in the days of Elisha, at the

hands of the King of Syria. Provisions reached such a figure that "an

ass' head was sold for eighty pieces of silver and the fourth part of a

cab of dove's dung for five pieces of silver."

An incident recorded of that heavy time will give one a very good idea of

the distress that prevailed within these crumbling walls. As the King

was walking upon the battlements one day, "a woman cried out, saying,

Help, my lord, O King! And the King said, What aileth thee? and she

answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him

to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we boiled my son, and did

eat him; and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son that we may

eat him; and she hath hid her son."

The prophet Elisha declared that within four and twenty hours the prices

of food should go down to nothing, almost, and it was so. The Syrian

army broke camp and fled, for some cause or other, the famine was

relieved from without, and many a shoddy speculator in dove's dung and

ass's meat was ruined.

We were glad to leave this hot and dusty old village and hurry on. At

two o'clock we stopped to lunch and rest at ancient Shechem, between the

historic Mounts of Gerizim and Ebal, where in the old times the books of

the law, the curses and the blessings, were read from the heights to the

Jewish multitudes below.

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The Innocents Abroad