The contrary method, of destroying one city to arrive at another, and hastily covering up what remains of both, has however, certain advantages, as it enables excavators to dogmatise without possibility of contradiction from succeeding archæologists, and so saves much of that discussion which, while it establishes knowledge and elicits facts, is a weariness to the amateur public of subscribers and contributors. The German (and, of course, Austrian) excavations are conducted by groups of savants, and not by individuals. Each has his own specialty; and as there are several of such groups now at work in Palestine each, at need, can be reinforced from elsewhere; results can be considered from various standpoints, and opinions exchanged. No _ad interim_ reports are presented to the public; the excavators are not obliged to have something to say at stated intervals; and when the results finally appear they are in a form which leaves nothing to be desired from the point of view of art production. Teutonic thoroughness frugality, and self-dedication can never be more admirably exhibited than in the prosecution of knowledge in this form; and the German expenditure, as compared with the result, is, in Palestine, as surprising in scientific research, as in their philanthropic institutions.
We rode as far as a terrace more than half way up, and then dismounting were soon absorbed in the excavation, on our own account, of a rubbish heap close by, where we filled our pockets with fragments of painted pottery and iridescent glass, with jar handles and broken lamps. "That is Cypriote," "that Phœnician," "that pre-Amoritic," "that merely Arabic," pronounced our experts. "Merely Arabic" might be earlier than the foundation of Westminster Abbey, or the days of Charlemagne, but we were willing to hold it cheap when we could have for the stooping, let us say, the fragment of a water-bottle, still fresh as to its ornamentation, pleasing as to its colouring, which had long been buried when the nomadic tribes of the Israelites first settled in Canaan; or a lamp which may have burned when "fought the kings of Canaan in Taanak by the waters of Megiddo"—celebrated in the savage war-song of Deborah the prophetess, which, in its geographical allusions, is a mine of wealth to the archæologist.