Of ancient Jericho nothing now remains but the bright spring, and the shapeless mound above it. We can hardly wonder at this when we find that even the Jericho of Herod has disappeared, and that only a vague conjecture can be made as to the position of Thrax and Taurus, the great towers which once defended it. It seems probable that this second town stood south of ancient Jericho, and even closer to the hills, for the great aqueduct which brought water, a distance of four miles, from the fine spring at the head of the wild Kelt chasm leads just to the opening of the plain, and seems to be the only one of the numerous aqueducts which dates back to Roman times. At the mouth of the pass, also, is the rock-fort called Jubr or Chubr, in which title we may recognise, as my companion, Mr. Drake, pointed out, a relic of the name Cupros, which was given to a tower above Herod's Jericho.
Jerome tells us that there were in his day two Jerichos, and in 333 A.D. the anonymous pilgrim of Bordeaux found a town at the foot of the pass. Here also we have remains of a bridge which has the _opus reticulatum_ of Roman masonry, and this, with a few strewn fragments and with two great mounds of sun-dried brick, seems all that is left of the second Jericho. The Byzantine, or fourth-century town, mentioned by Jerome as the second Jericho, is no doubt represented by the foundations and fragments of cornice and capital, over which the rider stumbles among the thorn-groves east of the 'Ain es Sultân.
By 700 A.D. Jericho had again disappeared, and thus, in the twelfth century, we find the site once more moved. The modern Erîha then springs into existence near a square tower, such as the Crusaders erected along their pilgrim-roads, and a tradition of the "Garden of Abrahamâ comes into existence as early as the time of Sæwulf (1102 A.D.). In the fourteenth century Sir John Maundeville finds Jericho a little village, and Abraham's Garden is then stated to be at the foot of the Quarantania. Fetellus makes the distance between Jericho and the latter mountain two miles, and thus it is pretty clear that the modern Erîha represents the site which was created in the Crusading period.
A question of even greater interest is that of the long-sought site of Gilgal, and our inquiries were rewarded with success. Robinson had heard the name Jiljûlieh, but had not been able to fix the site. A German traveller (Herr Schokke), in 1865, had been more fortunate, and was shown the place at a mound about a mile east of Erîha. It was important to ascertain the reliability of this discovery, and I succeeded in recovering the spot visited by this traveller, by means of the compass-bearing which he had been wise enough to take. I found three persons who knew the site by the name Jiljûlieh, and one of them conducted me to ruins to which a curious tradition applies.