Bede

“ Jericho, the city, which passed over the Jordan Joshua overthrew, to rule after they were slain, "our Holy Arculf seen a place for, for which, of Bethel, and Oza, from the tribe of Ephraim, another that he built, whom Our Saviour by his presence is the kindness to visit. At the same time, in which Jerusalem, the Roman obsedebant, on account of the treachery of the citizens was captured, and is now destroyed, for which the third was founded, which, after many intervals of the seasons and the same was overthrown: that now certain of which (as Arculf does it matter) are shown the steps of ruins. ”

“ Therefore that the cave of Bethlehem the Lord 's because of this the whole interior of marble, adorned with the honor of the Saviour is precious: to whom we of course dining room of stone, upon the cave of the holy the church of the blessed Virgin above the very place, where he is especially reported that the Lord was born, made by the building of a great is founded. ”

“ And try them, I say, he had seen Arculf One of them, six in the right hand side of the church in the pavimiento lying, and others of the same numbers in the north, all with unpolished and of cheap, he caught sight: each of which (as he himself does it matter Arculf) of this present time two youths of brave men scarcely out of the land they can raise it up. ”

“ Having passed through the great many countries, our Arculf, even the province of Tyre, the metropolis of Phoenix entered into, which in Hebrew, and the Syrians is called the word of Soar, things that no out of the land to have had an entrance to the Greek and Latin histories we read in the barbarous nations. But later, by Nebuchadnezzar king of the Chaldeans to be the cast of heaps, some affirm, and from the attack through with arrows, and rams, there was a place prepared for the, and then the island has been made in the plain and the open space. ”

“ To whom that is, such a country, being without a doubt is in need of rain to the earth, the rains of the Nile is well watered by their own free minister, where both the fields of tempers, that is, the richness of the heavens and the fecundity of the earth, and where the sailors and the husbandmen, opimentum the sole use of is had. ”

“ Their going out of Hebron lies in a broad plain on the north side of the, not far from the edge of the road to the left, went to meet pinosus not so great a mountain, three thousand men, being distant from Hebron: from whose PINETUM to Jerusalem, to the pine trees as far as the trees of the "Riding the camels in the to the hearths to be nourished. In the for the camels, I say, for in all Judea and Jerusalem, as Arculf makes a difference, the chariot of the wagons, or even more can be found rarely. ”

“ Chapter IX the valley of Mamre. But the plague from the east of Hebron, the field of the same met in regards to the cave of Machpelah before Mamre, which Abraham purchased from the shameless Hethite for a possession of a twofold burial. ”

“ There are attendants, Thus in the former, among whom I subjects with torches from a pile of wood and the other pattern of the fire, as it were the earth, and that heralds the and the informer, the Portenses of the throat making it manifest that goeth on the pass, but of the waves, and the porches the windings of the sine of: do not thin the keel will touched the rocks, and in Him the entrance of the waves between the rocks covered with anything to offend. ”

“ Chapter of the Jordan XVIIDe color. Jordanici the color of the river, such as we secretly told the Arculf, whitish on the surface of milk, it seems as it were: the color of the sea, of which such a person when he enters a long track of salt from the color of the sea, one dead by the channel of his can be easily to discern. ”

“ The size, are the harbor of furlongs and thirty it is clear dimension. And although the weather is the greatest, There is a harbor within the safest way of life, who from the above-the above-mentioned difficulties, and the object of the island, from sea and repels the waves: the which [it is bold, for] the shore of Porto, by the same narrow distensus the sine of the harbor of the whole are dislodged from a storm, in the cold of placidatur, by the where they had gone but intensifies. ”