The Jordan! How shall I make you see it as it winds its way through this great gash in the thirsty face of old Mother Earth?

All day long I have been travelling upon its banks in the lower part of its course. I have visited the ford where Joshua crossed with his army of Jews when he took possession of Canaan; have stood on the spot where it is said that Jesus was baptized of John, and have gone over the place where the waters were parted by the cloak of Elijah. Here at Jericho I am within a short gallop of the Dead Sea, into which the Jordan flows, and sitting on the steps of my hotel I can see Mount Nebo, where Moses stood when he viewed the Promised Land, which he was not to enter. In former travels I have seen the Jordan, near the Sea of Galilee, and have been not far from its source in the Lebanon Mountains.

The Jordan Valley is the cellar of the world. It is a great trench, which begins a thousand or more feet above the sea in the Lebanon Mountains, and within a distance of one hundred and sixty miles, as the crow flies, cuts its way down to thirteen hundred feet below sea level, where it ends in the Dead Sea. The bottom of that sea is a half mile below the surface of the Mediterranean, and in Jericho, where I am writing, we are almost four thousand feet below the highest point in Jerusalem. There is no other part of the earth uncovered by water where for an equal distance the land is sunken even two hundred feet below the level of the ocean. This is the strangest trough of the world. Though often associated with the idea of going to heaven, the Valley of the Jordan is emblematic of hell. Most of it is as parched as the dry sands of the Sahara, and just now its heat is as torrid as Tophet. The plain over which I rode to-day on my way to the river was covered with thorn bushes. The only green I saw after leaving the irrigated farms about Jericho was that bordering the gully through which the Jordan runs. For the rest, the alkaline earth cut up by the floods into castles and mounds, makes bare gullies and hills of all sizes and shapes.

The mean temperature of Jerusalem, only fourteen miles away, is 64° Fahrenheit. It is temperate throughout the year and snow falls there in the winter. The heat here is as great as that of the centre of Nubia. For six months in the year the mean temperature in the Jordan Valley averages 100° Fahrenheit.

But this is not the character of the whole course of the Jordan. Let me give you a bird’s-eye view of the river, or, better, let us suppose we have taken an aeroplane and are going from its source in the Lebanon Mountains to where it loses itself in the great sea of salt below here. It rises on the foot of Mount Hermon, whose peak is covered with snow the greater part of the year. It has two or three different sources. One is near Dan, and higher up is another at Banias, near the spot where Christ said: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

It is at Banias that the Jordan has its chief source. It comes from a cave in the limestone rock which is now choked up with stones, but out of which the water flows in a great volume, cold, sweet, and pure. There are trees about the cave and the stream runs through a beautiful park down to Lake Huleh, which is only seven feet above the sea. The spring of Banias has always been noted for its sweetness and purity. It is said the waters and cave were formerly dedicated to the god Pan, and that from him came the name Banias, or Panias. Greek tablets have been found near by, and ruined temples and columns show that the place was once the site of a considerable city. It has now only a mud village of about fifty huts.

Flying down to Lake Huleh, we see a marshy catch basin into which run other streams and from which the Jordan flows out. There is little activity about the lake. Near it live a few Bedouins whose only business seems to be making mats of the papyrus reeds growing on the shores. These are the waters of Merom beside which Joshua and his men of war battled with the Canaanites for the Promised Land.

A little farther down is the main crossing to Damascus. The place is known as the Bridge of Jacob’s Daughters, and the stream is here on the level of the sea. It drops six hundred and eighty feet in the next nine miles, falling in a series of twenty-seven cascades.

The remainder of the Jordan’s course runs between the seas of life and death. I refer to the Sea of Galilee at the north and the Dead Sea at the south. The first, though somewhat brackish, is full of fish and surrounded by verdure. The other is saltier than any other water on earth, and so bitter and poisonous that no living thing can exist within it. The distance between these two seas in a straight line north and south is about sixty-five miles, and the slope from one to the other is almost twelve feet to the mile, or over six hundred and sixty feet. Connecting them is this great trough of the Jordan, from one to sixteen miles wide. Through it flows the sacred river, twisting about like a corkscrew, and making so many turnings that it flows more than two hundred miles in an airline distance of only sixty miles. It runs with great force and there are numerous falls where electric plants might be put in. The land on each side might be turned into rich farms if it could only have water, and it may be that the good fairy of electricity will some time bring the dead earth to life.

There are some farms in the upper part of the course of the Jordan and there is a sugar plantation half way between Galilee and the Dead Sea, where soldiers work as labourers. There are small fields of grain, including millet, wheat, and barley here and there, and I am told that rice and indigo can be grown.

Down near the Dead Sea there is considerable cultivation on the Jericho plain. The land is irrigated by a stream from the mountains of Judea and by the spring of Elisha. It is cut up into small patches covered with orange groves, almond orchards, and vineyards. Much of the fruit goes up to Jerusalem. There are also fields of eggplants, tomatoes, and melons, and dates could undoubtedly be grown. All the way from here to old Jericho, a distance of about three miles, are orchards, vineyards, and gardens. They are fenced with thorn bushes, the thorns on which are great hooks turning inward. They are said to be the same thorns as those of which the crown of our Saviour was made.

The Jordan is not navigable. Along its whole course it has no wharves, no boats, and no cities or villages of any account. It has numerous fords but no bridges of any size. The wooden bridge about six miles above the Dead Sea is a toll bridge, with fords above and below it. The people use it only when the river is high. At other times the caravans save the toll by passing through the fords.

On its course from Galilee to the Dead Sea the river narrows and widens. Now it is a swift, black, sullen current flowing between ugly mud banks covered with refuse, now it comes close to the mountains which border the valley on either side, and down here at the Dead Sea it reaches a width of five hundred feet, being so shallow that you could almost wade across it.

The water gathers the denudations of the mountains. It changes in colour from season to season, and in the spring spreads out in floods over the valley. It is said that the parting of the water in order that Joshua and the Israelites might pass over was when the river was at its highest.

At this point in its course it is not a sweet water. It has gathered the salts from this arid country and is so full of organic matter that those who carry it home for baptisms have to boil and filter it to get rid of its disagreeable smell. I have several canteens which I filled myself from the stream, or rather with the water which I brought in wine bottles from the Jordan and had boiled and filtered before it was put into the cans. If I ever have a grandchild it shall be baptized with this water. I bought the canteens at the Jordan Hotel here at Jericho where they are kept on hand to be sold to the tourists and pilgrims. A vast number of them are carried away every year.

Let us go from Jericho to the land where the Moabites live on the other side of the river. It is only a few miles away, and we can drive there in a carriage. As we start, the great white blazing sun is climbing the blue above Mount Nebo, and the faint streak of the Dead Sea, with the haze that hangs always over it, can be seen down the valley. Our soldier gallops in front to scare off the Bedouins and we wind our way lazily in and out through the wheat fields. Leaving these we enter a desert on the edge of which stands Gilgal, where the Israelites first encamped after crossing the Jordan, and then go on through thorny scrub among gullies and hills until we approach the long fringes of thicket which border the river. There is more vegetation as we near this, and we go through the bushes until we come to a creek no wider than a city street. It looks like some of the small streams of our central states. I know many such in Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio, and there is one of just about the same size which goes by the name of Goose Creek in Loudoun County, Virginia. The Rhine and the Hudson, the Potomac, or even the Shenandoah, could swallow the Jordan without bulging, and just now it is so small that in the United States it would not be called a river at all.

Nevertheless, the current is swift at this place and we hire a fisherman to take us across. He charges twenty-five cents for the boat, and for this rows us up and down stream for an hour. He stands up as he rows and leans on the oars. We go to the other side of the Jordan and climb out through the willows. How quiet it is! The only sounds are the ripple of the stream as it washes the banks and the songs of sweet-voiced birds in the trees at our left. As we return we lean over and bathe our hands in the Jordan. The water is cold. When taken up in a bottle it looks like weak milk. We taste it. It is acrid and salty and we spit it out in disgust.

Here Christ is said to have been baptized of John. At this place, which is about three miles from the Dead Sea, the water at ordinary times is four or five feet deep. Most of the pilgrims come here, and it is the scene of tens of thousands of baptisms a year. The chief time of baptizing is Easter, when the Russians come by the thousands and when other members of the Greek Church unite with them in a great caravan which journeys here and camps.

Leaving the Jordan we make our way down the valley to the Dead Sea. The road goes through the thorn bushes and twists about through the barren hills. The land is salty and alkaline and all nature is dead. How hot the sun is, and how glaring! Our eyes smart, and horrid flies crawl with legs of glue over our faces. We try to brush them off but they alight and bite us again.

Now we are on the shore of the sea, which is covered with pebbles and driftwood. It looks more like a lake than a sea, and is just about the size of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. It is only fifty miles long and ten miles in width and we can see from one side of it to the other.

The Dead Sea lies between stony mountains. On the east are the desert hills of Moab, where Ruth was born and Moses is buried, and on the west lie those of Judea where the children of Israel came after Moses had pointed out to them the Promised Land. There are openings at the north and south, and away at the southwest are works for evaporating the water to make salt.

The Dead Sea has no outlet. The water evaporates so fast that it is usually misty here. It is estimated that over six million tons of water flow into it daily. Nevertheless, its level changes only a little throughout the year, and that at the times of the flood.

Now dip up some of the water in your hand and taste it. It burns your tongue and your lips. It is as bitter as gall. If you drank a glass of it you would probably die. It is the saltiest water on earth. If you will take a gallon and boil it down, you will find that one fourth of the contents is solid. It is six times as salty as the water of the ocean, and a cubic mile of it would contain nine hundred million tons of mineral matter. The sum is so staggering that you cannot comprehend it, but at ninety tons to the car it would take ten million cars to carry that much, and if your cars were a little under forty feet long the train required for the load would reach eighty miles. There is asphalt or pitch in the bottom of the lake and the water has other minerals in addition to salt. Indeed, the salt proper left after boiling comprises only about 7 per cent. of the whole.

If you would further test the water, take an egg and drop it into the sea. It will float, leaving one third of the egg above the surface. A fresh egg will sink in fresh water, and we break our egg to be sure it is fresh.

Another test. Let us strip off our clothing and go in for a swim. You do not know how to swim? That makes no difference in this salty sea. The water is so heavy you could not sink if you tried. You can lie on your back and float all day long. You can stand upright and tread, but it is almost impossible to maintain such a position. Your feet have a tendency to fly to the surface, and you bob up and down like “the monkey on the stick.” Now try to swim. Your feet fly out of the water and you cannot make any headway. Now let us wade out and let the sun dry our skins. We feel as if we had been painted with mucilage. We are gummy and oily and incrusted with salt. We were scratched as we came through the thorn bushes and the salt got into the wounds and they are burning like fire. We shall not be happy until we can get some fresh water to wash off the salt.

An interesting thing about the Dead Sea is the fact that on its shores were the sites of the ancient Sodom and Gomorrah, the two towns which became so wicked that the Lord rained fire and brimstone upon them. There are said to be sulphur springs in the country about, and it may have been a volcano which caused the destruction.

It was right here on the plain of the Jordan that the nephew of Abraham and the cousin of Ishmael and Isaac, the good man Lot, had his estate. It was in Sodom that he lived, one of the richest of its citizens, and the only just man in the city. From there he went out with Mrs. Lot and the two girls. And it is said to be at the southwest end of the lake, not far away, that Madame Lot turned and looked back and, as we may suppose, longed for the fleshpots. And lo! she became a pillar of salt. There are still deposits of rock-salt at that end of the lake, and the guides now show the remains of a pillar which they say was once Mrs. Lot, but which has been licked by the camels until it has almost disappeared.