It is this event, and not any other, that puts an immeasurable gulf between this and all other cities, and perhaps this difference is more felt the farther one is from Jerusalem. The visitor expects too much; he is unreasonably impatient of the contrast between the mean appearance of the theatre and the great events that have been enacted on it; perhaps he is not prepared for the ignorance, the cupidity, the credulity, the audacious impostures under Christian names, on the spot where Christianity was born.
When one has exhausted the stock sights of Jerusalem, it is probably the dullest, least entertaining city of the Orient; I mean, in itself, for its pilgrims and its religious fêtes, in the spring of the year, offer always some novelties to the sight-seer; and, besides, there is a certain melancholy pleasure to be derived from roaming about outside the walls, enveloped in a historic illusion that colors and clothes the nakedness of the landscape.
The chief business of the city and the region seems to be the manufacture of religious playthings for the large children who come here. If there is any factory of relics here I did not see it. Nor do I know whether the true cross has still the power of growing, which it had in the fourth century, to renew itself under the constant demand for pieces of it. I did not go to see the place where the tree grew of which it was made; the exact spot is shown in a Greek convent about a mile and a half west of the city. The tree is said to have been planted by Abraham and Noah. This is evidently an error; it may have been planted by Adam and watered by Noah.
There is not much trade in antiquities in the city; the shops offer little to tempt the curiosity-hunter. Copper coins of the Roman period abound, and are constantly turned up in the fields outside the city, most of them battered and defaced beyond recognition. Jewish mites are plenty enough, but the silver shekel would be rare if the ingenious Jews did not keep counterfeits on hand. The tourist is waited on at his hotel by a few patient and sleek sharks with cases of cheap jewelry and doubtful antiques, and if he seeks the shops of the gold and silver bazaars he will find little more. I will not say that he will not now and then pick up a piece of old pottery that has made the journey from Central Asia, or chance upon a singular stone with a talismanic inscription. The hope that he may do so carries the traveller through a great many Eastern slums. The chief shops, however, are those of trinkets manufactured for the pilgrims, of olive-wood, ivory, bone, camels' teeth, and all manner of nuts and seeds. There are more than fifty sorts of beads, strung for profane use or arranged for rosaries, and some of them have pathetic names, like “Job's tears.” Jerusalem is entitled to be called the City of Beads.
There is considerable activity in Jewish objects that are old and rather unclean; and I think I discovered something like an attempt to make a “corner” in phylacteries, that is, in old ones, for the new are made in excess of the demand. If a person desires to carry home a phylactery to exhibit to his Sunday school, in illustration of the religion of the Jews, he wants one that has been a long time in use. I do not suppose it possible that the education of any other person is as deficient as mine was in the matter of these ornamental aids in worship. But if there is one, this description is for him: the phylactery, common size, is a leathern box about an inch and a half square, with two narrow straps of leather, about three feet long, sewed to the bottom corners. The box contains a parchment roll of sacred writing. When the worshipper performs his devotions in the synagogue, he binds one of the phylacteries about his left arm and the other about his head, so that the little box has something of the appearance of a leathern horn sprouting out of his forehead. Phylacteries are worn only in the synagogue, and in this respect differ from the greasy leathern talismans of the Nubians, which contain scraps from the Koran, and are never taken off. Whatever significance the phylactery once had to the Jew it seems now to have lost, since he is willing to make it an article of merchandise. Perhaps it is poverty that compels him also to sell his ancient scriptures; parchment rolls of favorite books, such as Esther, that are some centuries old, are occasionally to be bought, and new rolls, deceitfully doctored into an appearance of antiquity, are offered freely.
A few years ago the antiquarian world was put into a ferment by what was called the “Shoepira collection,” a large quantity of clay pottery,—gods, votive offerings, images, jars, and other vessels,—with inscriptions in unknown characters, which was said to have been dug up in the land of Moab, beyond the Jordan, and was expected to throw great light upon certain passages of Jewish history, and especially upon the religion of the heathen who occupied Palestine at the time of the conquest. The collection was sent to Berlin; some eminent German savans pronounced it genuine; nearly all the English scholars branded it as an impudent imposture. Two collections of the articles have been sent to Berlin, where they are stored out of sight of the public generally, and Mr. Shoepira has made a third collection, which he still retains.
Mr. Shoepira is a Hebrew antiquarian and bookseller, of somewhat eccentric manners, but an enthusiast. He makes the impression of a man who believes in his discoveries, and it is generally thought in Jerusalem that if his collection is a forgery, he himself is imposed on. The account which he gives of the places where the images and utensils were found is anything but clear or definite. We are required to believe that they have been dug up in caves at night and by stealth, and at the peril of the lives of the discoverers, and that it is not safe to visit these caves in the daytime on account of the Bedaween. The fresh-baked appearance of some of the articles is admitted, and it is said that it was necessary to roast them to prevent their crumbling when exposed to the air. Our theory in regard to these singular objects is that a few of those first shown were actually discovered, and that all the remainder have been made in imitation of them. Of the characters (or alphabet) of the inscriptions, Mr. Schepira says he has determined twenty-three; sixteen of these are Phoenician, and the others, his critics say, are meaningless. All the objects are exceedingly rude and devoid of the slightest art; the images are many of them indecent; the jars are clumsy in shape, but the inscriptions are put on with some skill. The figures are supposed to have been votive offerings, and the jars either memorial or sepulchral urns.
The hideous collection appeared to me sui generis, although some of the images resemble the rudest of those called Phoenician which General di Cesnola unearthed in Cyprus. Without merit, they seem to belong to a rude age rather than to be the inartistic product of this age. That is, supposing them to be forgeries, I cannot see how these figures could be conceived by a modern man, who was capable of inventing a fraud of this sort. He would have devised something better, at least something less simple, something that would have somewhere betrayed a little modern knowledge and feeling. All the objects have the same barbarous tone, a kind of character that is distinct from their rudeness, and the same images and designs are repeated over and over again. This gives color to the theory that a few genuine pieces of Moabite pottery were found, which gave the idea for a large manufacture of them. And yet, there are people who see these things, and visit all the holy places, and then go away and lament that there are no manufactories in Jerusalem.
Jerusalem attracts while it repels; and both it and all Palestine exercise a spell out of all proportion to the consideration they had in the ancient world. The student of the mere facts of history, especially if his studies were made in Jerusalem itself, would be at a loss to account for the place that the Holy City occupies in the thought of the modern world, and the importance attached to the history of the handful of people who made themselves a home in this rocky country. The Hebrew nation itself, during the little time it was a nation, did not play a part in Oriental affairs at all commensurate with its posthumous reputation. It was not one of the great kingdoms of antiquity, and in that theatre of war and conquest which spread from Ethiopia to the Caspian Sea, it was scarcely an appreciable force in the great drama.
The country the Hebrews occupied was small; they never conquered or occupied the whole of the Promised Land, which extended from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arabian plain, from Hamath to Sinai. Their territory in actual possession reached only from Dan to Beersheba. The coast they never subdued; the Philistines, who came from Crete and grew to be a great people in the plain, held the lower portion of Palestine on the sea, and the Phoenicians the upper. Except during a brief period in their history, the Jews were confined to the hill-country. Only during the latter part of the reign of David and two thirds of that of Solomon did the Jewish kingdom take on the proportions of a great state. David extended the Israelitish power from the Gulf of Akaba to the Euphrates; Damascus paid him tribute; he occupied the cities of his old enemies, the Philistines, but the kingdom of Tyre, still in the possession of Hiram, marked the limit of Jewish sway in that direction. This period of territorial consequence was indeed brief. Before Solomon was in his grave, the conquests bequeathed to him by his father began to slip from his hand. The life of the Israelites as a united nation, as anything but discordant and warring tribes, after the death of Joshua, is all included in the reigns of David and Solomon,—perhaps sixty or seventy years.
The Israelites were essentially highlanders. Some one has noticed their resemblance to the Scotch Highlanders in modes of warfare. In fighting they aimed to occupy the heights. They descended into the plain reluctantly; they made occasional forays into the lowlands, but their hills were their strength, as the Psalmist said; and they found security among their crags and secluded glens from the agitations which shook the great empires of the Eastern world. Invasions, retreats, pursuits, the advance of devouring hosts or the flight of panic-stricken masses, for a long time passed by their ridge of country on either side, along the Mediterranean or through the land of Moab. They were out of the track of Oriental commerce as well as of war. So removed were they from participation in the stirring affairs of their era that they seem even to have escaped the omnivorous Egyptian conquerors. Eor a long period conquest passed them by, and it was not till their accumulation of wealth tempted the avarice of the great Asiatic powers that they were involved in the conflicts which finally destroyed them. The small kingdom of Judah, long after that of Israel had been utterly swept away, owed its continuance of life to its very defensible position. Solomon left Jerusalem a strong city, well supplied with water, and capable of sustaining a long siege, while the rugged country around it offered little comfort to a besieging army.
For a short time David made the name of Israel a power in the world, and Solomon, inheriting his reputation, added the triumphs of commerce to those of conquest. By a judicious heathen alliance with Hiram of Tyre he was able to build vessels on the Red Sea and man them with Phoenician sailors, for voyages to India and Ceylon; and he was admitted by Hiram to a partnership in his trading adventures to the Pillars of Hercules. But these are only episodes in the Jewish career; the nation's part in Oriental history is comparatively insignificant until the days of their great calamities. How much attention its heroism and suffering attracted at that time we do not know.
Though the Israelites during their occupation of the hill-country of Palestine were not concerned in the great dynastic struggles of the Orient, they were not, however, at peace. Either the tribes were fighting among themselves or they were involved in sanguinary fights with the petty heathen chiefs about them. We get a lively picture of the habits of the time in a sentence in the second book of Samuel: “And it came to pass, after the year was expired, at the time when kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah.” It was a pretty custom. In that season when birds pair and build their nests, when the sap mounts in the trees and travellers long to go into far countries, kings felt a noble impulse in their veins to go out and fight other kings. But this primitive simplicity was mingled with shocking barbarity; David once put his captives under the saw, and there is nothing to show that the Israelites were more moved by sentiments of pity and compassion than their heathen neighbors. There was occasionally, however, a grim humor in their cruelty. When Judah captured King Adoni-bezek, in Bezek, he cut off his great toes and his thumbs. Adoni-bezek, who could appreciate a good thing, accepted the mutilation in the spirit in which it was offered, and said that he had himself served seventy kings in that fashion; “threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table.”
From the death of Joshua to the fall of Samaria, the history of the Jews is largely a history of civil war. From about seven hundred years before Christ, Palestine was essentially a satrapy of the Assyrian kings, as it was later to become one of the small provinces of the Roman empire. At the time when Sennacherib was waiting before Jerusalem for Hezekiah to purchase his withdrawal by stripping the gold from the doors of the Temple, the foundations of a city were laid on the banks of the Tiber, which was to extend its sway over the known world, to whose dominion the utmost power of Jerusalem was only a petty sovereignty, and which was destined to rival Jerusalem itself as the spiritual capital of the earth.
If we do not find in the military power or territorial consequence of the Jews an explanation of their influence in the modern world, still less do we find it in any faithfulness to a spiritual religion, the knowledge of which was their chief distinction among the tribes about them. Their lapses from the worship of Jehovah were so frequent, and of such long duration, that their returns to the worship of the true God seem little more than breaks in their practice of idolatry. And these spasmodic returns were due to calamities, and fears of worse judgments. Solomon sanctioned by national authority gross idolatries which had been long practised. At his death, ten of the tribes seceded from the dominion of Judah and set up a kingdom in which idolatry was made and remained the state religion, until the ten tribes vanished from the theatre of history. The kingdom of Israel, in order to emphasize its separation from that of Judah, set up the worship of Jehovah in the image of a golden calf. Against this state religion of image-worship the prophets seem to have thought it in vain to protest; they contented themselves with battling against the more gross and licentious idolatries of Baal and Ashtaroth; and Israel always continued the idol-worship established by Jeroboam. The worship of Jehovah was the state religion of the little kingdom of Judah, but during the period of its existence, before the Captivity, I think that only four of its kings were not idolaters. The people were constantly falling away into the heathenish practices of their neighbors.
If neither territorial consequence nor religious steadfastness gave the Jews rank among the great nations of antiquity, they would equally fail of the consideration they now enjoy but for one thing, and that is, after all, the chief and enduring product of any nationality; we mean, of course, its literature. It is by that, that the little kingdoms of Judah and Israel hold their sway over the world. It is that which invests ancient Jerusalem with its charm and dignity. Not what the Jews did, but the songs of their poets, the warnings and lamentations of their prophets, the touching tales of their story-tellers, draw us to Jerusalem by the most powerful influences that affect the human mind. And most of this unequalled literature is the product of seasons of turbulence, passion, and insecurity. Except the Proverbs and Song of Solomon, and such pieces as the poem of Job and the story of Ruth, which seem to be the outcome of literary leisure, the Hebrew writings were all the offspring of exciting periods. David composed his Psalms—the most marvellous interpreters of every human aspiration, exaltation, want, and passion—with his sword in his hand; and the prophets always appear to ride upon a whirlwind. The power of Jerusalem over the world is as truly a literary one as that of Athens is one of art. That literature was unknown to the ancients, or unappreciated: otherwise contemporary history would have considered its creators of more consequence than it did.
We speak, we have been speaking, of the Jerusalem before our era, and of the interest it has independent of the great event which is, after all, its chief claim to immortal estimation. It becomes sacred ground to us because there, in Bethlehem, Christ was born; because here—not in these streets, but upon this soil—he walked and talked and taught and ministered; because upon Olivet, yonder, he often sat with his disciples, and here, somewhere,—it matters not where,—he suffered death and conquered death.
This is the scene of these transcendent events. We say it to ourselves while we stand here. We can clearly conceive it when we are at a distance. But with the actual Jerusalem of to-day before our eyes, its naked desolation, its superstition, its squalor, its vivid contrast to what we conceive should be the City of our King, we find it easier to feel that Christ was born in New England than in Judæa.
IT is on a lovely spring morning that we set out through the land of Benjamin to go down among the thieves of Jericho, and to the Jordan and the Dead Sea. For protection against the thieves we take some of them with us, since you cannot in these days rely upon finding any good Samaritans there.
For some days Abd-el-Atti has been in mysterious diplomatic relations with the robbers of the wilderness, who live in Jerusalem, and farm out their territory. “Thim is great rascals,” says the dragoman; and it is solely on that account that we seek their friendship: the real Bedawee is never known to go back on his word to the traveller who trusts him, so long as it is more profitable to keep it than to break it. We are under the escort of the second sheykh, who shares with the first sheykh the rule of all the Bedaween who patrol the extensive territory from Hebron to the fords of the Jordan, including Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Mar Saba, and the shores of the Dead Sea; these rulers would have been called kings in the old time, and the second sheykh bears the same relation to the first that the Cæsar did to the Augustus in the Roman Empire.
Our train is assembled in the little market-place opposite the hotel, or rather it is assembling, for horses and donkeys are slow to arrive, saddles are wanting, the bridles are broken, and the unpunctuality and shiftlessness of the East manifest themselves. Abd-el-Atti is in fierce altercation with a Koorland nobleman about a horse, which you would not say would be likely to be a bone of contention with anybody. They are both endeavoring to mount at once. Friends are backing each combatant, and the air is thick with curses in guttural German and maledictions in shrill Arabic. Unfortunately I am appealed to.
“What for this Dutchman, he take my horse?”
“Perhaps he hired it first?”
“P'aps not. I make bargain for him with the owner day before yesterday.”
“I have become dis pferd for four days,” cries the Baron.
There seems to be no reason to doubt the Baron's word; he has ridden the horse to Bethlehem, and become accustomed to his jolts, and no doubt has the prior lien on the animal. The owner has let him to both parties, a thing that often happens when the second comer offers a piastre more. Another horse is sent for, and we mount and begin to disentangle ourselves from the crowd. It is no easy matter, especially for the ladies. Our own baggage-mules head in every direction. Donkeys laden with mountains of brushwood push through the throng, scraping right and left; camels shamble against us, their contemptuous noses in the air, stretching their long necks over our heads; market-women from Bethlehem scream at us; and greasy pilgrims block our way and curse our horses' hoofs.
One by one we emerge and get into a straggling line, and begin to comprehend the size of our expedition. Our dragoman has made as extensive preparations as if we were to be the first to occupy Gilgal and Jericho, and that portion of the Promised Land. We are equipped equally well for fighting and for famine. A party of Syrians, who desire to make the pilgrimage to the Jordan, have asked permission to join us, in order to share the protection of our sheykh, and they add both picturesqueness and strength to the grand cavalcade which clatters out of Jaffa Gate and sweeps round the city wall. Heaven keep us from undue pride in our noble appearance!
Perhaps our train would impress a spectator as somewhat mixed, and he would be unable to determine the order of its march. It is true that the horses and the donkeys and the mules all have different rates of speed, and that the Syrian horse has only two gaits,—a run and a slow walk. As soon as we gain the freedom of the open country, these differences develop. The ambitious dragomen and the warlike sheykh put their horses into a run and scour over the hills, and then come charging back upon us, like Don Quixote upon the flock of sheep. The Syrians imitate this madness. The other horses begin to agitate their stiff legs; the donkeys stand still and protest by braying; the pack-mules get temporarily crazy, charge into us with the protruding luggage, and suddenly wheel into the ditch and stop. This playfulness is repeated in various ways, and adds to the excitement without improving the dignity of our march.
We are of many nationalities. There are four Americans, two of them ladies. The Doctor, who is accustomed to ride the mustangs of New Mexico and the wild horses of the Western deserts, endeavors to excite a spirit of emulation in his stiff-kneed animal, but with little success. Our dragoman is Egyptian, a decidedly heavy weight, and sits his steed like a pyramid.
The sheykh is a young man, with the treacherous eye of an eagle; a handsome fellow, who rides a lean white horse, anything but a beauty, and yet of the famous Nedjed breed from Mecca. This desert warrior wears red boots, white trousers and skirt, blue jacket, a yellow kufia, confined about the head by a black cord and falling upon his shoulders, has a long rifle slung at his back, an immense Damascus sword at his side, and huge pistols, with carved and inlaid stocks, in his belt. He is a riding arsenal and a visible fraud, this Bedawee sheykh. We should no doubt be quite as safe without him, and perhaps less liable to various extortions. But on the road, and from the moment we set out, we meet Bedaween, single and in squads, savage-looking vagabonds, every one armed with a gun, a long knife, and pistols with blunderbuss barrels, flaring in such a manner as to scatter shot over an acre of ground. These scarecrows are apparently paraded on the highway to make travellers think it is insecure. But I am persuaded that none of them would dare molest any pilgrim to the Jordan.
Our allies, the Syrians, please us better. There is a Frenchified Syrian, with his wife, from Mansura, in the Delta of Egypt. The wife is a very pretty woman (would that her example were more generally followed in the East), with olive complexion, black eyes, and a low forehead-; a native of Sidon. She wears a dark green dress, and a yellow kufia on her head, and is mounted upon a mule, man-fashion, but upon a saddle as broad as a feather-bed. Her husband, in semi-Syrian costume, with top-boots, carries a gun at his back and a frightful knife in his belt. Her brother, who is from Sidon, bears also a gun, and wears an enormous sword. Very pleasant people these, who have armed themselves in the spirit of the hunter rather than of the warrior, and are as completely equipped for the chase as any Parisian who ventures in pursuit of game into any of the dangerous thickets outside of Paris.
The Sidon wife is accompanied by two servants, slaves from Soudan, a boy and a girl, each about ten years old,—two grinning, comical monkeys, who could not by any possibility be of the slightest service to anybody, unless it is a relief to their pretty mistress to vent her ill-humor upon their irresponsible persons. You could n't call them handsome, though their skins are of dazzling black, and their noses so flat that you cannot see them in profile. The girl wears a silk gown, which reaches to her feet and gives her the quaint appearance of an old woman, and a yellow vest; the boy is clad in motley European clothes, bought second-hand with reference to his growing up to them,—upon which event the trousers-legs and cuffs of his coat could be turned down,—and a red fez contrasting finely with his black face. They are both mounted on a decrepit old horse, whose legs are like sled-stakes, and they sit astride on top of a pile of baggage, beds, and furniture, with bottles and camp-kettles jingling about them. The girl sits behind the boy and clings fast to his waist with one hand, while with the other she holds over their heads a rent white parasol, to prevent any injury to their jet complexions. When the old baggage-horse starts occasionally into a hard trot, they both bob up and down, and strike first one side and then the other, but never together; when one goes up the other goes down, as if they were moved by different springs; but both show their ivory and seem to enjoy themselves. Heaven knows why they should make a pilgrimage to the Jordan.
Our Abyssinian servant, Abdallah, is mounted, also on a pack-horse, and sits high in the air amid bags and bundles; he guides his brute only by a halter, and when the animal takes a fancy to break into a gallop, there is a rattling of dishes and kettles that sets the whole train into commotion; the boy's fez falls farther than ever back on his head, his teeth shine, and his eyes dance as he jolts into the midst of the mules and excites a panic, which starts everything into friskiness, waking up even the Soudan party, which begins to bob about and grin. There are half a dozen mules loaded with tents and bed furniture; the cook, and the cook's assistants, and the servants of the kitchen and the camp are mounted on something, and the train is attended besides by drivers and ostlers, of what nations it pleases Heaven. But this is not all. We carry with us two hunting dogs, the property of the Syrian. The dogs are not for use; they are a piece of ostentation, like the other portion of the hunting outfit, and contribute, as do the Soudan babies, to our appearance of Oriental luxury.
We straggle down through the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and around the Mount of Olives to Bethany; and from that sightly slope our route is spread before us as if we were looking upon a map. It lies through the “wilderness of Judæa.” We are obliged to revise our Western notions of a wilderness as a region of gross vegetation. The Jews knew a wilderness when they saw it, and how to name it. You would be interested to know what a person who lived at Jerusalem, or anywhere along the backbone of Palestine, would call a wilderness. Nothing but the absolute nakedness of desolation could seem to him dreary. But this region must have satisfied even a person accustomed to deserts and pastures of rocks. It is a jumble of savage hills and jagged ravines, a land of limestone rocks and ledges, whitish gray in color, glaring in the sun, even the stones wasted by age, relieved nowhere by a tree, or rejoiced by a single blade of grass. Wild beasts would starve in it, the most industrious bird could n't collect in its length and breadth enough soft material to make a nest of; it is what a Jew of Hebron or Jerusalem or Hamah would call a “wilderness”! This exhausts the language of description. How vividly in this desolation stands out the figure of the prophet of God, clothed with camel's hair and with a girdle of skin about his loins, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness.”
The road is thronged with Jordan pilgrims. We overtake them, they pass us, we meet them in an almost continuous train. Most of them are peasants from Armenia, from the borders of the Black Sea, from the Caucasus, from Abyssinia. The great mass are on foot, trudging wearily along with their bedding and provisions, the thick-legged women carrying the heaviest loads; occasionally you see a pilgrim asleep by the roadside, his pillow a stone. But the travellers are by no means all poor or unable to hire means of conveyance,—you would say that Judæa had been exhausted of its beasts of burden of all descriptions for this pilgrimage, and that even the skeletons had been exhumed to assist in it. The pilgrims are mounted on sorry donkeys, on wrecks of horses, on mules, sometimes an entire family on one animal. Now and then we encounter a “swell” outfit, a wealthy Russian well mounted on a richly caparisoned horse and attended by his servants; some ride in palanquins, some in chairs. We overtake an English party, the central figure of which is an elderly lady, who rides in a sort of high cupboard slung on poles, and borne by a mule before and a mule behind; the awkward vehicle sways and tilts backwards and forwards, and the good woman looks out of the window of her coop as if she were sea-sick of the world. Some ladies, who are unaccustomed to horses, have arm-chairs strapped upon the horses' backs, in which they sit. Now and then two chairs are strapped upon one horse, and the riders sit back to back. Sometimes huge panniers slung on the sides of the horse are used instead of chairs, the passengers riding securely in them without any danger of falling out. It is rather a pretty sight when each basket happens to be full of children. There is, indeed, no end to the strange outfits and the odd costumes. Nearly all the women who are mounted at all are perched upon the top of all their household goods and furniture, astride of a bed on the summit. There approaches a horse which seems to have a sofa on its back, upon which four persons are seated in a row, as much at ease as if at home; it is not, however, a sofa; four baskets have been ingeniously fastened into a frame, so that four persons can ride in them abreast. This is an admirable contrivance for the riders, much better than riding in a row lengthwise on the horse, when the one in front hides the view from those behind.
Diverted by this changing spectacle, we descend from Bethany. At first there are wild-flowers by the wayside and in the fields, and there is a flush of verdure on the hills, all of which disappears later. The sky is deep blue and cloudless, the air is exhilarating; it is a day for enjoyment, and everything and everybody we encounter are in a joyous mood, and on good terms with the world. The only unamiable exception is the horse with which I have been favored. He is a stocky little stallion, of good shape, but ignoble breed, and the devil—which is, I suppose, in the horse what the old Adam is in man—has never been cast out of him. At first I am in love with his pleasant gait and mincing ways, but I soon find that he has eccentricities that require the closest attention on my part, and leave me not a moment for the scenery or for biblical reflections. The beast is neither content to go in front of the caravan nor in the rear he wants society, but the instant he gets into the crowd he lets his heels fly right and left. After a few performances of this sort, and when he has nearly broken the leg of the Syrian, my company is not desired any more by any one. No one is willing to ride within speaking distance of me. This sort of horse may please the giddy and thoughtless, but he is not the animal for me. By the time we reach the fountain 'Ain el-Huad, I have quite enough of him, and exchange steeds with the dragoman, much against the latter's fancy; he keeps the brute the remainder of the day cantering over stones and waste places along the road, and confesses at night that his bridle-hand is so swollen as to be useless.
We descend a steep hill to this fountain, which flows from a broken Saracenic arch, and waters a valley that is altogether stony and unfertile except in some patches of green. It is a general halting-place for travellers, and presents a most animated appearance when we arrive. Horses, mules, and men are struggling together about the fountain to slake their thirst; but there is no trough nor any pool, and the only mode to get the water is to catch it in the mouth as it drizzles from the hole in the arch. It is difficult for a horse to do this, and the poor things are beside themselves with thirst. Near by are some stone ruins in which a man and woman have set up a damp coffee-shop, sherbet-shop, and smoking station. From them I borrow a shallow dish, and succeed in getting water for my horse, an experiment which seems to surprise all nations. The shop is an open stone shed with a dirt floor, offering only stools to the customers; yet when the motley crowd are seated in and around it, sipping coffee and smoking the narghilehs (water-pipes) with an air of leisure as if to-day would last forever, you have a scene of Oriental luxury.
Our way lies down a winding ravine. The country is exceedingly rough, like the Wyoming hills, but without trees or verdure. The bed of the stream is a mass of rock in shelving ledges; all the rock in sight is a calcareous limestone. After an hour of this sort of secluded travel we ascend again and reach the Red Khan, and a scene still more desolate because more extensive. The khan takes its name from the color of the rocks; perched upon a high ledge are the ruins of this ancient caravansary, little more now than naked walls. We take shelter for lunch in a natural rock grotto opposite, exactly the shadow of a rock longed for in a weary land. Here we spread our gay rugs, the servants unpack the provision hampers, and we sit and enjoy the wide view of barrenness and the picturesque groups of pilgrims. The spot is famous for its excellent well of water. It is, besides, the locality usually chosen for the scene of the adventure of the man who went down to Jericho and fell among thieves, this being the khan at which he was entertained for twopence. We take our siesta here, reflecting upon the great advance in hotel prices, and endeavoring to re-create something of that past when this was the highway between great Jerusalem and the teeming plain of the Jordan. The Syro-Phoenician woman smoked a narghileh, and, looking neither into the past nor the future, seemed to enjoy the present.
From this elevation we see again the brown Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea. Our road is downward more precipitously than it has been before. The rocks are tossed about tumultuously, and the hills are rent, but there is no evidence of any volcanic action. Some of the rock strata are bent, as you see the granite in the White Mountains, but this peculiarity disappears as we approach nearer to the Jordan. The translator of M. François Lenormant's “Ancient History of the East” says that “the miracles which accompanied the entrance of the Israelites into Palestine seem such as might have been produced by volcanic agency.” No doubt they might have been; but this whole region is absolutely without any appearance of volcanic disturbance.
As we go on, we have on our left the most remarkable ravine in Palestine; it is in fact a canon in the rocks, some five hundred feet deep, the sides of which are nearly perpendicular. At the bottom of it flows the brook Cherith, finding its way out into the Jordan plain. We ride to the brink and look over into the abyss. It was about two thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine years ago, and probably about this time of the year (for the brook went dry shortly after), that Elijah, having incurred the hostility of Ahab, who held his luxurious court at Samaria, by prophesying against him, came over from Gilead and hid himself in this ravine.
“Down there,” explains Abd-el-Atti, “the prophet Elijah fed him the ravens forty days. Not have that kind of ravens now.”
Unattractive as this abyss is for any but a temporary summer residence, the example of Elijah recommended it to a great number of people in a succeeding age. In the wall of the precipice are cut grottos, some of them so high above the bed of the stream that they are apparently inaccessible, and not unlike the tombs in the high cliffs along the Nile. In the fourth and fifth centuries monks swarmed in all the desert places of Egypt and Syria like rabbits; these holes, near the scene of Elijah's miraculous support, were the abodes of Christian hermits, most of whom starved themselves down to mere skin and bones waiting for the advent of the crows. On the ledge above are the ruins of ancient chapels, which would seem to show that this was a place of some resort, and that the hermits had spectators of their self-denial. You might as well be a woodchuck and sit in a hole as a monk, unless somebody comes and looks at you.
As we advance, the Jordan valley opens more broadly upon our sight. At this point, which is the historical point, the scene of the passage of the Jordan and the first appearance of the Israelitish clans in the Promised Land, the valley is ten miles broad. It is by no means a level plain; from the west range of mountains it slopes to the river, and the surface is broken by hillocks, ravines, and water-courses. The breadth is equal to that between the Connecticut River at Hartford and the Talcott range of hills. To the north we have in view the valley almost to the Sea of Galilee, and can see the white and round summit of Hermon beyond; on the east and on the west the barren mountains stretch in level lines; and on the south the blue waters of the Dead Sea continue the valley between ranges of purple and poetic rocky cliffs.
The view is magnificent in extent, and plain and hills glow with color in this afternoon light. Yonder, near the foot of the eastern hills, we trace the winding course of the Jordan by a green belt of trees and bushes. The river we cannot see, for the “bottom” of the river, to use a Western phrase, from six hundred to fifteen hundred feet in breadth, is sunk below the valley a hundred feet and more. This bottom is periodically overflowed. The general aspect of the plain is that of a brown desert, the wild vegetation of which is crisped by the scorching sun. There are, however, threads of verdure in it, where the brook Cherith and the waters from the fountain 'Ain es-Sultan wander through the neglected plain, and these strips of green widen into the thickets about the little village of Rîha, the site of ancient Gilgal. This valley is naturally fertile; it may very likely have been a Paradise of fruit-trees and grass and sparkling water when the Jews looked down upon it from the mountains of Moab; it certainly bloomed in the Roman occupation; and the ruins of sugar-mills still existing show that the crusading Christians made the cultivation of the sugar-cane successful here; it needs now only the waters of the Jordan and the streams from the western foot-hills directed by irrigating ditches over its surface, moistening its ashy and nitrous soil, to become again a fair and smiling land.
Descending down the stony and precipitous road, we turn north, still on the slope of the valley. The scant grass is already crisped by the heat, the bushes are dry skeletons. A ride of a few minutes brings us to some artificial mounds and ruins of buildings upon the bank of the brook Cherith. The brickwork is the fine reticulated masonry such as you see in the remains of Roman villas at Tusculum. This is the site of Herod's Jericho, the Jericho of the New Testament. But the Jericho which Joshua destroyed and the site of which he cursed, the Jericho which Hiel rebuilt in the days of the wicked Ahab, and where Elisha abode after the translation of Elijah, was a half-mile to the north of this modern town.
We have some difficulty in fording the brook Cherith, for the banks are precipitous and the stream is deep and swift; those who are mounted upon donkeys change them for horses, the Arab attendants wade in, guiding the stumbling animals which the ladies ride, the lumbering beast with the Soudan babies comes splashing in at the wrong moment, to the peril of those already in the torrent, and is nearly swept away; the sheykh and the servants who have crossed block the narrow landing; but with infinite noise and floundering about we all come safely over, and gallop along a sort of plateau, interspersed with thorny nubk and scraggy bushes. Going on for a quarter of an hour, and encountering cultivated spots, we find our tents already pitched on the bushy bank of a little stream that issues from the fountain of 'Ain es-Sultan a few rods above. Near the camp is a high mound of rubbish. This is the site of our favorite Jericho, a name of no majesty like that of Rome, and endeared to us by no associations like Jerusalem, but almost as widely known as either; probably even its wickedness would not have preserved its reputation, but for the singular incident that attended its first destruction. Jericho must have been a city of some consequence at the time of the arrival of the Israelites; we gain an idea of the civilization of its inhabitants from the nature of the plunder that Joshua secured; there were vessels of silver and of gold, and of brass and iron; and this was over fourteen hundred years before Christ.
Before we descend to our encampment, we pause for a survey of this historic region. There, towards Jordan, among the trees, is the site of Gilgal (another name that shares the half-whimsical reputation of Jericho), where the Jews made their first camp. The king of Jericho, like his royal cousins roundabout, had “no more spirit in him” when he saw the Israelitish host pass the Jordan. He shut himself up in his insufficient walls, and seems to have made no attempt at a defence. Over this upland the Jews swarmed, and all the armed host with seven priests and seven ram's-horns marched seven days round and round the doomed city, and on the seventh day the people shouted the walls down. Every living thing in the city was destroyed except Rahab and her family, the town was burned, and for five hundred years thereafter no man dared to build upon its accursed foundations. Why poor Jericho was specially marked out for malediction we are not told.
When it was rebuilt in Ahab's time, the sons of the prophets found it an agreeable place of residence; large numbers of them were gathered here while Elijah lived, and they conversed with that prophet when he was on his last journey through this valley, which he had so often traversed, compelled by the Spirit of the Lord. No incident in the biblical story so strongly appeals to the imagination, nor is there anything in the poetical conception of any age so sublime as the last passage of Elijah across this plain and his departure into heaven beyond Jordan. When he came from Bethel to Jericho, he begged Elisha, his attendant, to tarry here; but the latter would not yield either to his entreaty or to that of the sons of the prophets. We can see the way the two prophets went hence to Jordan. Fifty men of the sons of the prophets went and stood to view them afar off, and they saw the two stand by Jordan. Already it was known that Elijah was to disappear, and the two figures, lessening in the distance, were followed with a fearful curiosity. Did they pass on swiftly, and was there some premonition, in the wind that blew their flowing mantles, of the heavenly gale? Elijah smites the waters with his mantle, the two pass over dry-shod, and “as they still went on and talked, behold there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it, and he cried, 'My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof.' And he saw him no more.”
Elislia returned to Jericho and abode there while the sons of the prophets sought for Elijah beyond Jordan three days, but did not find him. And the men of the city said to Elisha, “Behold, I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord seeth, but the water is naught and the ground is barren.” Then Elisha took salt and healed the spring of water; and ever since, to this day, the fountain, now called 'Ain es-Sultan, has sent forth sweet water.
Turning towards the northwest, we see the passage through the mountain, by the fountain 'Ain Duk, to Bethel. It was out of some woods there, where the mountain is now bare, that Elisha called the two she-bears which administered that dreadful lesson to the children who derided his baldness. All the region, indeed, recalls the miracles of Elisha. It was probably here that Naaman the Syrian came to be healed; there at Gilgal Elisha took the death out of the great pot in which the sons of the prophets were seething their pottage; and it was there in the Jordan that he made the iron axe to swim.
Of all this celebrated and ill-fated Jericho, nothing now remains but a hillock and Elisha's spring. The wild beasts of the desert prowl about it, and the night-bird hoots over its fall,—a sort of echo of the shouts that brought down its walls. Our tents are pitched near the hillock, and the animals are picketed on the open ground before them by the stream. The Syrian tourist in these days travels luxuriously. Our own party has four tents,—the kitchen tent, the dining tent, and two for lodging. They are furnished with tables, chairs, all the conveniences of the toilet, and carpeted with bright rugs. The cook is an artist, and our table is one that would have astonished the sons of the prophets. The Syrian party have their own tents; a family from Kentucky has camped near by; and we give to Jericho a settled appearance. The elder sheykh accompanies the other party of Americans, so that we have now all the protection possible.
The dragoman of the Kentuckians we have already encountered in Egypt and on the journey, and been impressed by his respectable gravity. It would perhaps be difficult for him to tell his nationality or birthplace; he wears the European dress, and his gold spectacles and big stomach would pass him anywhere for a German professor. He seems out of place as a dragoman, but if any one desired a savant as a companion in the East, he would be the man. Indeed, his employers soon discover that his forte is information, and not work. While the other servants are busy about the camps Antonio comes over to our tent, and opens up the richness of his mind, and illustrates his capacity as a Syrian guide.
“You know that mountain, there, with the chapel on top?” he asks.
“No.”
“Well, that is Mt. Nebo, and that one next to it is Pisgah, the mountain of the prophet Moses.”
Both these mountains are of course on the other side of the Jordan in the Moab range, but they are not identified,—except by Antonio. The sharp mountain behind us is Quarantania, the Mount of Christ's Temptation. Its whole side to the summit is honey-combed with the cells of hermits who once dwelt there, and it is still the resort of many pilgrims.
The evening is charming, warm but not depressing; the atmosphere is even exhilarating, and this surprises us, since we are so far below the sea level. The Doctor says that it is exactly like Colorado on a July night. We have never been so low before, not even in a coal-mine. We are not only about thirty-seven hundred feet below Jerusalem, we are over twelve hundred below the level of the sea. Sitting outside the tent under the starlight, we enjoy the novelty and the mysteriousness of the scene. Tents, horses picketed among the bushes, the firelight, the groups of servants and drivers taking their supper, the figure of an Arab from Gilgal coming forward occasionally out of the darkness, the singing, the occasional violent outbreak of kicking and squealing among the ill-assorted horses and mules, the running of loose-robed attendants to the rescue of some poor beast, the strong impression of the locality upon us, and I know not what Old Testament flavor about it all, conspire to make the night memorable.
“This place very dangerous,” says Antonio, who is standing round, bursting with information. “Him berry wise,” is Abdel-Atti's opinion of him. “Know a great deal; I tink him not live long.”
“What is the danger?” we ask.
“Wild beasts, wild boars, hyenas,—all these bush full of them. It was three years now I was camped here with Baron Kronkheit. 'Bout twelve o'clock I heard a noise and came out. Right there, not twenty feet from here, stood a hyena as big as a donkey, his two eyes like fire. I did not shoot him for fear to wake up the Baron.”
“Did he kill any of your party?”
“Not any man. In the morning I find he has carried off our only mutton.”
Notwithstanding these dangers, the night passes without alarm, except the barking of jackals about the kitchen tent. In the morning I ask Antonio if he heard the hyenas howling in the night. “Yes, indeed, plenty of them; they came very near my tent.”
We are astir at sunrise, breakfast, and start for the Jordan. It is the opinion of the dragoman and the sheykh that we should go first to the Dead Sea. It is the custom. Every tourist goes to the Dead Sea first, bathes, and then washes off the salt in the Jordan. No one ever thought of going to the Jordan first. It is impossible. We must visit the Dead Sea, and then lunch at the Jordan. We wished, on the contrary, to lunch at the Dead Sea, at which we should otherwise only have a very brief time. We insisted upon our own programme, to the great disgust of all our camp attendants, who predicted disaster.
The Jordan is an hour and a half from Jericho; that is the distance to the bathing-place of the Greek pilgrims. We descend all the way. Wild vegetation is never wanting; wild-flowers abound; we pass through thickets of thorns, bearing the yellow “apples of the Dead Sea,” which grow all over this plain. At Gilgal (now called Biha) we find what is probably the nastiest village in the world, and its miserable inhabitants are credited with all the vices of Sodom. The wretched huts are surrounded by a thicket of nubk as a protection against the plundering Bedaween. The houses are rudely built of stone, with a covering of cane or brush, and each one is enclosed in a hedge of thorns. These thorns, which grow rankly on the plain, are those of which the “crown of thorns” was plaited, and all devout pilgrims carry away some of them. The habitations within these thorny enclosures are filthy beyond description, and poverty-stricken. And this is in a watered plain which would bloom with all manner of fruits with the least care. Indeed, there are a few tangled gardens of the rankest vegetation; in them we see the orange, the fig, the deceptive pomegranate with its pink blossoms, and the olive. As this is the time of pilgrimage, a company of Turkish soldiers from Jerusalem is encamped at the village, and the broken country about it is covered with tents, booths, shops, kitchens, and presents the appearance of a fair and a camp-meeting combined. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pilgrims, who go every morning, as long as they remain here, to dip in the Jordan. Near the village rises the square tower of an old convent, probably, which is dignified with the name of the “house of Zacchæus.” This plain was once famed for its fertility; it was covered with gardens and palm-groves; the precious balsam, honey, and henna were produced here; the balsam gardens were the royal gift of Antony to Cleopatra, who transferred the balsam-trees to Heliopolis in Egypt.
As we ride away from Gilgal and come upon a more open and desert plain, I encounter an eagle sitting on the top of a thorn-tree, not the noblest of his species, but, for Palestine, a very fair eagle. Here is a chance for the Syrian hunter; he is armed with gun and pistols; he has his dogs; now, if ever, is the time for him to hunt, and I fall back and point out his opportunity. He does not embrace it. It is an easy shot; perhaps he is looking for wild boars; perhaps he is a tender-minded hunter. At any rate, he makes no effort to take the eagle, and when I ride forward the bird gracefully rises in the air, sweeping upward in magnificent circles, now veering towards the Mount of Temptation, and now towards Nebo, but always as serene as the air in which he floats.
And now occurs one of those incidents which are not rare to travellers in Syria, but which are rare and scarcely believed elsewhere. As the eagle hangs for a second motionless in the empyrean far before me, he drops a feather. I see the gray plume glance in the sun and swirl slowly down in the lucid air. In Judæa every object is as distinct as in a photograph. You can see things at a distance you can make no one believe at home. The eagle plume, detached from the noble bird, begins its leisurely descent.
I see in a moment my opportunity. I might never have another. All travellers in Syria whose books I have ever read have one or more startling adventures. Usually it is with a horse. I do not remember any with a horse and an eagle. I determine at once to have one. Glancing a moment at the company behind me, and then fixing my eye on the falling feather, I speak a word to my steed, and dart forward.
A word was enough. The noble animal seemed to comprehend the situation. He was of the purest Arab breed; four legs, four white ankles, small ears, slender pasterns, nostrils thin as tissue paper, and dilating upon the fall of a leaf; an eye terrible in rage, but melting in affection; a round barrel; gentle as a kitten, but spirited as a game-cock. His mother was a Nedjed mare from Medina, who had been exchanged by a Bedawee chief for nine beautiful Circassians, but only as a compromise after a war by the Pasha of Egypt for her possession. Her father was one of the most respectable horses in Yemen. Neither father, mother, nor colt had ever eaten anything but selected dates.
At the word, Abdallah springs forward, bounding over the sand, skimming over the thorn bushes, scattering the Jordan pilgrims right and left. He does not seem to be so much a horse as a creation of the imagination,—a Pegasus. At every leap we gain upon the feather, but it is still far ahead of us, and swirling down, down, as the air takes the plume or the weight of gravity acts upon the quill. Abdallah does not yet know the object of our fearful pace, but his docility is such that every time I speak to him he seems to shoot out of himself in sudden bursts of enthusiasm. The terrible strain continues longer than I had supposed it would, for I had undercalculated both the height at which the feather was cast and my distance to the spot upon which it must fall. None but a horse fed on dates could keep up the awful gait. We fly and the feather falls; and it falls with increasing momentum. It is going, going to the ground, and we are not there. At this instant, when I am in despair, the feather twirls, and Abdallah suddenly casts his eye up and catches the glint of it. The glance suffices to put him completely in possession of the situation. He gives a low neigh of joy; I plunge both spurs into his flanks about six or seven inches; he leaps into the air, and sails like a bird,—of course only for a moment; but it is enough; I stretch out my hand and catch the eagle's plume before it touches the ground. We light on the other side of a clump of thorns, and Abdallah walks on as quietly as if nothing had happened; he was not blown; not a hair of his glossy coat was turned. I have the feather to show.
Pilgrims are plenty, returning from the river in a continuous procession, in numbers rivalling the children of Israel when they first camped at Gilgal. We descend into the river-bottom, wind through the clumps of tangled bushes, and at length reach an open place where the river for a few rods is visible. The ground is trampled like a watering-spot for cattle; the bushes are not large enough to give shade; there are no trees of size except one or two at the water's edge; the banks are slimy, there seems to be no comfortable place to sit except on your horse—on Jordan's stormy banks I stand and cast a wistful eye; the wistful eye encounters nothing agreeable.
The Jordan here resembles the Arkansas above Little Rock, says the Doctor; I think it is about the size of the Concord where it flows through the classic town of that name in Massachusetts; but it is much swifter. Indeed, it is a rapid current, which would sweep away the strongest swimmer. The opposite bank is steep, and composed of sandy loam or marl. The hither bank is low, but slippery, and it is difficult to dip up water from it. Close to the shore the water is shallow, and a rope is stretched out for the protection of the bathers. This is the Greek bathing-place, but we are too late to see the pilgrims enter the stream; crowds of them are still here, cutting canes to carry away, and filling their tin cans with the holy water. We taste the water, which is very muddy, and find it warm but not unpleasant. We are glad that we have decided to lunch at the Dead Sea, for a more uninviting place than this could not he found; above and below this spot are thickets and boggy ground. It is beneath the historical and religious dignity of the occasion to speak of lunch, but all tourists know what importance it assumes on such an excursion, and that their high reflections seldom come to them on the historical spot. Indeed, one must be removed some distance from the vulgar Jordan before he can glow at the thought of it. In swiftness and volume it exceeds our expectations, but its beauty is entirely a creation of the imagination.
We had the opportunity of seeing only a solitary pilgrim bathe. This was a shock-headed Greek young man, who reluctantly ventured into the dirty water up to his knees and stood there shivering, and whimpering over the orders of the priest on the bank, who insisted upon his dipping. Perhaps the boy lacked faith; perhaps it was his first experiment with water; at any rate, he stood there until his spiritual father waded in and ducked the blubbering and sputtering neophyte under. This was not a baptism, but a meritorious bath. Some seedy fellahs from Gilgal sat on the bank fishing. When I asked them if they had anything, they produced from the corners of their gowns some Roman copper coins, picked up at Jericho, and which they swore were dropped there by the Jews when they assaulted the city with the rams'-horns. These idle fishermen caught now and then a rather soft, light-colored perch, with large scales,—a sickly-looking fish, which the Greeks, however, pronounced “tayeb.”
We leave the river and ride for an hour and a half across a nearly level plain, the earth of which shows salts here and there, dotted with a low, fat-leaved plant, something like the American sage-bush. Wild-flowers enliven the way, and although the country is not exactly cheerful, it has no appearance of desolation except such as comes from lack of water.
The Dead Sea is the least dead of any sheet of water I know. When we first arrived the waters were a lovely blue, which changed to green in the shifting light, but they were always animated and sparkling. It has a sloping sandy beach, strewn with pebbles, up which the waves come with a pleasant murmur. The plain is hot; here we find à cool breeze. The lovely plain of water stretches away to the south between blue and purple ranges of mountains, which thrust occasionally bold promontories into it, and add a charm to the perspective.
The sea is not inimical either to vegetable or animal life on its borders. Before we reach it I hear bird-notes high in the air like the song of a lark; birds are flitting about the shore and singing, and gulls are wheeling over the water; a rabbit runs into his hole close by the beach. Growing close to the shore is a high woody stonewort, with abundance of fleshy leaves and thousands of blossoms, delicate protruding stamens hanging over the waters of the sea itself. The plant with the small yellow fruit, which we take to be that of the apples of Sodom, also grows here. It is the Solarium spinosa, closely allied to the potato, egg-plant, and tomato; it has a woody stem with sharp recurved thorns, sometimes grows ten feet high, and is now covered with round orange berries.
It is not the scene of desolation that we expected, although some branches and trunks of trees, gnarled and bleached, the drift-wood of the Jordan, strewn along the beach, impart a dead aspect to the shore. These dry branches are, however, useful; we build them up into a wigwam, over which we spread our blankets; under this we sit, sheltered from the sun, enjoying the delightful breeze and the cheering prospect of the sparkling sea. The improvident Arabs, now that it is impossible to get fresh water, begin to want it; they have exhausted their own jugs and ours, having neglected to bring anything like an adequate supply. To see water and not be able to drink it is too much for their philosophy.
The party separates along the shore, seeking for places where bushes grow out upon tongues of land and offer shelter from observation for the bather. The first impression we have of the water is its perfect clearness. It is the most innocent water in appearance, and you would not suspect its saltness and extreme bitterness. No fish live in it; the water is too salt for anything but codfish. Its buoyancy has not been exaggerated by travellers, but I did not expect to find bathing in it so agreeable as it is. The water is of a happy temperature, soft, not exactly oily, but exceedingly agreeable to the skin, and it left a delicious sensation after the bath but it is necessary to be careful not to get any of it into the eyes. For myself, I found swimming in it delightful, and I wish the Atlantic Ocean were like it; nobody then would ever be drowned. Floating is no effort; on the contrary, sinking is impossible. The only annoyance in swimming is the tendency of the feet to strike out of water, and of the swimmer to go over on his head. When I stood upright in the water it came about to my shoulders; but it was difficult to stand, from the constant desire of the feet to go to the surface. I suppose that the different accounts of travellers in regard to the buoyancy of the water are due to the different specific gravity of the writers. We cannot all be doctors of divinity. I found that the best way to float was to make a bow of the body and rest with feet and head out of water, which was something like being in a cushioned chair. Even then it requires some care not to turn over. The bather seems to himself to be a cork, and has little control of his body.
About two hundred yards from the shore is an artificial island of stone, upon which are remains of regular masonry. Probably some crusader had a castle there. We notice upon looking down into the clear depths, some distance out, in the sunlight, that the lake seems, as it flows, to have translucent streaks, which are like a thick solution of sugar, showing how completely saturated it is with salts. It is, in fact, twelve hundred and ninety-two feet below the Mediterranean, nothing but a deep, half-dried-up sea; the chloride of magnesia, which gives it its extraordinarily bitter taste, does not crystallize and precipitate itself so readily as the chloride of sodium.
We look in vain for any evidence of volcanic disturbance or action of fire. Whatever there may be at the other end of the lake, there is none here. We find no bitumen or any fire-stones, although the black stones along the beach may have been supposed to be bituminous. All the pebbles and all the stones of the beach are of chalk flint, and tell no story of fire or volcanic fury.
Indeed, the lake has no apparent hostility to life. An enterprising company could draw off the Jordan thirty miles above here and make all this valley a garden, producing fruits and sugar-cane and cotton, and this lake one of the most lovely watering-places in the world. I have no doubt maladies could be discovered which its waters are exactly calculated to cure. I confidently expect to hear some day that great hotels are built upon this shore, which are crowded with the pious, the fashionable, and the diseased. I seem to see this blue and sunny lake covered with a gay multitude of bathers, floating about the livelong day on its surface; parties of them making a pleasure excursion to the foot of Pisgah; groups of them chatting, singing, amusing themselves as they would under the shade of trees on land, having umbrellas and floating awnings, and perhaps servants to bear their parasols; couples floating here and there at will in the sweet dream of a love that seems to be suspended between the heaven and the earth. No one will be at any expense for boats, for every one will be his own boat, and launch himself without sail or oars whenever he pleases. How dainty will be the little feminine barks that the tossing mariner will hail on that peaceful sea! No more wailing of wives over husbands drowned in the waves, no more rescuing of limp girls by courageous lovers. People may be shipwrecked if there comes a squall from Moab, but they cannot be drowned. I confess that this picture is the most fascinating that I have been able to conjure up in Syria.
We take our lunch under the wigwam, fanned by a pleasant breeze. The persons who partake it present a pleasing variety of nations and colors, and the “spread” itself, though simple, was gathered from many lands. Some one took the trouble to note the variety: raisins from Damascus, bread, chicken, and mutton from Jerusalem, white wine from Bethlehem, figs from Smyrna, cheese from America, dates from Nubia, walnuts from Germany, water from Elisha's well, eggs from Hen.
We should like to linger till night in this enchanting place, but for an hour the sheykh and dragoman have been urging our departure; men and beasts are represented as suffering for water,—all because we have reversed the usual order of travel. As soon as we leave the lake we lose its breeze, the heat becomes severe; the sandy plain is rolling and a little broken, but it has no shade, no water, and is indeed a weary way. The horses feel the want of water sadly. The Arabs, whom we had supposed patient in deprivation, are almost crazy with thirst. After we have ridden for over an hour the sheykh's horse suddenly wheels off and runs over the plain; my nag follows him, apparently without reason, and in spite of my efforts I am run away with. The horses dash along, and soon the whole cavalcade is racing after us. The object is soon visible,—a fringe of trees, which denotes a brook; the horses press on, dash down the steep bank, and plunge their heads into the water up to the eyes. The Arabs follow suit. The sheykh declares that in fifteen minutes more both men and horses would have been dead. Never before did anybody lunch at the Dead Sea.
When the train comes up, the patient donkey that Madame rides is pushed through the brook and not permitted to wet his muzzle. I am indignant at such cruelty, and spring off my horse, push the two donkey-boys aside, and lead the eager donkey to the stream. At once there is a cry of protest from dragomans, sheykh, and the whole crowd, “No drink donkey, no drink donkey, no let donkey, bad for donkey.” There could not have been a greater outcry among the Jews when the ark of the covenant was likely to touch the water. I desist from my charitable efforts. Why the poor beast, whose whole body craved water as much as that of the horse, was denied it, I know not. It is said that if you give a donkey water on the road he won't go thereafter. Certainly the donkey is never permitted to drink when travelling. I think the patient and chastened creature will get more in the next world than his cruel masters.
Nearly all the way over the plain we have the long snowy range of Mt. Herinon in sight, a noble object, closing the long northern vista, and a refreshment to the eyes wearied by the parched vegetation of the valley and dazzled by the aerial shimmer. If we turn from the north to the south, we have the entirely different but equally poetical prospect of the blue sea enclosed in the receding hills, which fall away into the violet shade of the horizon. The Jordan Valley is unique; by a geologic fault it is dropped over a thousand feet below the sea-level; it is guarded by mountain-ranges which are from a thousand to two thousand feet high; at one end is a mountain ten thousand feet high, from which the snow never disappears; at the other end is a lake forty miles long, of the saltest and bitterest water in the world. All these contrasts the eye embraces at one point.
We dismount at the camp of the Russian pilgrims by Rîha, and walk among the tents and booths. The sharpers of Syria attend the strangers, tempt them with various holy wares, and entice them into their dirty coffee-shops. It is a scene of mingled credulity and knavery, of devotion and traffic. There are great booths for the sale of vegetables, nuts, and dried fruit. The whole may be sufficiently described as a camp-meeting without any prayer-tent.
At sunset I have a quiet hour by the fountain of Elisha. It is a remarkable pool. Under the ledge of limestone rocks the water gushes out with considerable force, and in such volume as to form a large brook which flows out of the basin and murmurs over a stony bed. You cannot recover your surprise to see a river in this dry country burst suddenly out of the ground. A group of native women have come to the pool with jars, and they stay to gossip, sitting about the edge upon the stones with their feet in the water. One of them wears a red gown, and her cheeks are as red as her dress; indeed, I have met several women to-day who had the complexion of a ripe Flemish Beauty pear. As it seems to be the fashion, I also sit on the bank of the stream with my feet in the warm swift water, and enjoy the sunset and the strange concourse of pilgrims who are gathering about the well. They are worthy Greeks, very decent people, men and women, who salute me pleasantly as they arrive, and seem to take my participation in the bath as an act of friendship.