I could find no inscription, but it would take days to examine all the stones thoroughly, and it is most probable that a careful investigation of them would reveal something which would throw a still more definite light on the character and period of the building, though I confess I entertain very little doubt in respect to either. Altogether I regard these ruins of Umm el-Kanatar as the most interesting discovery I have yet made, and as being well worthy another visit and a more minute examination than I was able to bestow upon them.
The sheik now appeared to think he had done his duty, and expressed his intention of returning to his village and of leaving me to find my way down the Wady Samak by myself. This I did not object to, as there was still plenty of daylight, and I could, in fact, make out from where I was now standing the position of the ruins of Kersa on the margin of the lake, whither I had despatched my servants and baggage animals direct from my last night's quarters, with orders to await my arrival there.
It was up the branch of the wady that I was descending that the projected railway from Haifa to Damascus would have to be led, and it was some satisfaction to see that it offered facilities for the ascent of the line. The scenery was in the highest degree picturesque, the sides of the valley sometimes sloping back for some distance to the foot of the basalt precipices which formed its upper wall; at others these approached and formed projecting and overhanging promontories, like that on which the Kasr Berdawil was situated. We scrambled down by a rugged path to the small stream at the bottom with the view of following it, if possible, to its outlet on the lake, but this we soon found to be impracticable, and were assured by a Bedouin, whose hut we finally reached on its margin, that we must cross it, and make an ascent on the opposite side. This led us by a roundabout, hilly, but picturesque route across numerous and intersecting wadys, and past one ruin, of which nothing remained but the black blocks of hewn basalt. I was fortunate enough, however, to meet a man who told me the name, which I added to my list of unknown ruins, and so, after much scrambling, we reached at last the white limestone strata, and the purling brook again with its fringe of oleanders, and could see in the distance the one large solitary tree which we had given as our rendezvous, and beneath which our servants were standing, that marks the site of the ruins of Kersa, or the Gergesa of the Bible, where Christ healed the two men possessed with devils, and suffered those malignant spirits to enter into the herd of swine.