The scenery was tame and featureless, with a single dark Tell in front, and white marl peaks capped with flint to the west. The heat and glare were oppressive, and we were glad at noon to rest under a white chalk cliff, and were able to realise the force of the poetic language of Isaiah, "The shadow of a great rock in a weary landâ (Isaiah xxxii. 2).
We ascended the Tell or mound of Seb'a, which is two and a half miles east of the Wells of Beersheba, and thence we had a fine view of the great boundary valley which limited our work on the south, joining the long ravine which comes down from Hebron, and running west in a broad, flat, gravelly bed, between high walls of brown earth. The pebbles were white and dry, yet water-worn, for, as we found in the following spring, a river will occasionally flow for hours along the Wâdy bed. East of us there were remarkable white chalk hills called El Ghurrah, and on the west a low ridge shut out the maritime plain. To the north were the hills of Judah, dotted with lotus-trees, and to the south stretched the endless Desert of Wanderings.
No mules appeared, and we therefore rode down towards the wells, passing by innumerable burrows of the jerboa, and by numerous herds of camels, with a distant view of black "houses of hair.â At length we spied a tent, and our servants talking with mounted Arabs near the principal well. At the same moment I saw a pigeon by one of the wells, and fired, killing it on the spot. I noticed that the Arabs rode away immediately after, and I found that they had been insolent, and had ordered the servants to take down the tent, but, seeing a well-armed party approaching, and conceiving a great respect for a gun that could kill at such a distance, with characteristic Bedawîn caution, they made off before we came up.
The desert of Beersheba is a beautiful pasture-land in spring, when the grass and flowers cover the grey mud, as in the Jordan Valley; but in November it is very desolate; not a tree exists near the wells, and only the foundations of a flourishing fourth-century town remain.
Our tents were by the principal well, which is twelve feet three inches in diameter, and over forty-five feet deep, lined with rings of masonry to a depth of twenty-eight feet. A second well, five feet in diameter, exists about 300 yards to the west, and on the east is a third, which is dry, twenty-three feet deep, and nine feet two inches in diameter. The sides of all the wells are furrowed by the ropes of the water-drawers; but we made one discovery which was rather disappointing, namely, that the masonry is not very ancient. Fifteen courses down, on the south side of the large well, there is a stone with an inscription in Arabic, on a tablet dated, as well as I could make out, 505 A.H., or in the twelfth century. This stone must be at least as old as those at the mouth, which are furrowed with more than a hundred channels by the ropes of seven centuries of water-drawers.