This name is applied to the Kishon, mentioned further on, celebrated in Deborah's song (Judg. v. 21), but it is about five miles south of Acre, the river nearest to the town being the Belus, noted for its fine sand suitable for glass-making. It is not unlikely that R. Benjamin alludes to the celebrated ox-spring of which Arab writers have much to say. Mukkadasi writes in 985: "Outside the eastern city gate is a spring. This they call Ain al Bakar, relating how it was Adam—peace be upon him!—who discovered this spring, and gave his oxen water therefrom, whence its name."
Gath-Hepher, the birthplace of Jonah, near Kefr Kenna, in the territory of Zebulon (Joshua xix. 13), is not here referred to, but the land of Hepher, I Kings iv. 10 is probably meant.
In Benjamin's time hermits, who eventually founded the Carmelite order of monks, occupied grottoes on Mount Carmel.
Benjamin travelled along the coast to Caesarea. Mr. Guy Le Strange (Palestine under the Moslems, 1890, p. 477) writes: "Tall Kanîsah, or Al Kunaisah, the Little Church, is the mound a few miles north of Athlith, which the Crusaders took to be the site of Capernaum." Benjamin must have known very well that Maon, which was contiguous to another Carmel (referred to in Joshua xv. 55), belonged to Judah, and was not in the north of Palestine. Here, as in the case of Gath and elsewhere, he quotes what was the hearsay identification current at the time he visited these places. See an article by C.R. Conder on "Early Christian Topography" in the Quarterly Statements of the Palestine Exploration Fund for 1876, p.16. Cf. The Ancient Hebrew Tradition, by Prof. Fr. Hommel, p. 243.
In the time of the Crusaders Gath was supposed to be near Jamnia, but nothing definite is known as to its site. (Baedeker, Handbook to Palestine and Syria, 1876, p. 317.)