village, hunted and barked at by the watching wolf-dog, and perhaps exciting the apprehensions of the unprotected

women.

I leaned against a high fence of brush enclosing some of the huts, and mused upon the wonderful events of which this miserable place had been the scene, until my eyes began to close; when, opening a place among the bushes, I drew my cloak around me and crawled in, and soon fell fast asleep. Once during the night I was worried and almost dragged out of my burrowing-place by the dogs, but I kicked them away and slept on. At daylight the aga was pulling me by the shoulder, armed to the teeth, and ready to escort me. I shook myself and my toilet was made, and before the laughers, and singers, and dancers of the previous night had waked from their slumbers, we were mounted and on our way to the Jordan.

THE RIVER JORDAN.

205

CHAPTER XV.

The River Jordan.-The Dead Sea.-Force of Example-Buoyancy of the Dead Sea.-A Perilous Ascent.-A Navigator of the Dead Sea.Story of the Voyage.-The Convent of Santa Saba.

MOVING directly from the ruined village, we soon left the fertile plains of Jericho and entered the barren valley of the Jordan. It was washed and torn by the mountain torrents, full of gullies and large sand-hills; and in about an hour and a half we were standing on the banks of the river, at the most hallowed spot on the margin of that sacred stream, where, eighteen hundred years ago, John baptized the Redeemer of the world; and where, year after year, thousands of pilgrims throw themselves into the river with the blind belief that, by bathing in its waters, they wash away their sins. As a pious pilgrim, it would have been my duty, perhaps, to do the same; but the reader will please remember that it was the last day of March; that I had slept in a bush; that my limbs were stiff; and that it was not yet six o'clock in the morning, and that I had not breakfasted. Sitting down, then, on the bank, I made my morning meal, and drank as devoutly of its water as any pilgrim who ever stood by Jordan.

I afterward followed the river close along its bank till it emptied into the Dead Sea, and nowhere found any spot that, for beauty of scenery, could be compared with this consecrated bathing-place of the pilgrims. The bank here is about ten or twelve feet high; a clear, level table of land, covered with rich grass, and large bushes on the edge overhanging the river. Judging by the eye, the river is here VOL. II.-8

about thirty paces broad; the current is very rapid, and the pilgrim, in bathing, is obliged to hold on by the bushes to avoid being carried away. Here, it is said, the wild beast still has his haunt; and the traveller sometimes, when the river is rising, may realize the expression, “He shall come up like a lion out of the swelling of Jordan." Opposite, the bank is low, and the bushes grow down to the water's edge. Immediately below this the river narrows to ten paces; and there is not another spot on the line of the Jordan which can attract the eye of the traveller. It is a small, broken, and muddy stream, running between banks of barren sand, without bloom or verdure; and if it were not for the associations connected with it, a man would turn from it as the most uninteresting of rivers. In one place I saw an Arab wading across; and the river there, so far as I could judge, had not fallen more than two feet. I followed it as closely as the cracks and gullies would allow, cutting off none of the bends. For the last two or three miles it runs between perpendicular banks of sand, from five to ten feet high, and its pure waters are already corrupted by the pestiferous influence of the bituminous lake. On the left it stops even with the shore; but on the right the bank runs out to a low, sandy point, round which a quantity of driftwood is collected; and here, with a gentle ripple of its waters, the Jordan is lost in the Dead Sea.

I followed it almost to the very point, until my horse's feet sank above his fetlocks in the wet sand. It was the old opinion, and was counted among the wonders of the Lake Asphaltites, that the river passed through without mingling with the waters of the lake; and Pococke says, "I thought I saw the stream of a different colour;" but Pococke did not follow the river down to the extreme point. I did; and could see most distinctly the very spot where the waters mingled; instead of the river keeping its way through, its current was rather stopped at once by the

denser water of the lake; and, in fact, for two or three miles above its mouth, the Jordan is impregnated with the salt and bituminous matter of the lake.

Almost at the moment of my turning from the Jordan to the Dead Sea, notwithstanding the long-credited accounts that no bird could fly over without dropping dead upon its surface, I saw a flock of gulls floating quietly on its bosom ; and when I roused them with a stone, they flew down the lake, skimming its surface until they had carried themselves out of sight. From the point on which I stood, near its eastern shore, the sea was spread out before me, motionless as a lake of molten lead, bounded on either side by ranges of high and barren mountains, and on its southern extremity by the great desert Valley of El Ghor; constantly receiving the waters of the Jordan, but, unlike other waters, sending no tribute to the sea. Pliny, Diodorus Siculus, and Josephus describe it as more than sixty miles long; but Mr. Banks and his companions, by observation from elevated heights, make it not more than thirty; and, as the ancients were better acquainted with it than modern geographers, it has been supposed that the lake has contracted in its dimensions, and that part of the Valley of El Ghor was once covered by its waters. Moving on slowly from the point of the Jordan, the shores low and sandy, strewed with brush and driftwood, and rising in a slope to the sandy plain above, I rode along nearly the whole head of the lake, with my horse's feet in the water, and twice picked up a large piece of bitumen, almost like common pitch, supposed to be thrown up from the bottom of the lake. The sand is not bright like that of an Atlantic or Mediterranean beach, but of a dirty, dark brown. The water is exceedingly clear and transparent, but its taste and smell are a compound of all that is bad.

It was now the last day of March, and even before we left the plains of the Jordan the sun had been intensely hot.

without a branch or leaf to break its force, it poured upon the dreary waste around the Dead Sea with a scorching and withering heat. It was on this shore that the Knight of the Leopard encountered the Saracen Emir; and in the sandy plain above is the beautiful scene of the Diamond of the Desert, in the opening of Scott's Crusaders. The general features of the scenery along the northern shore of the Dead Sea are admirably described. The Diamond of the Desert is, of course, the creation of the author's fancy; and the only actual error is in placing the wilderness of Engaddi, which Scott has confounded with the mountains of Quarantania, but which is really half way down the borders of the sea.

It was two o'clock when my guards, having conducted me along the head of the sea, proposed returning to Jericho. I had already had some difficulty with them. Twice disappointed in my purposed exploration of this sea; once in my wish, conceived on the top of Mount Hor, to strike it at its southern extremity, and coast along its borders; and then, in the still more attractive project of exploring it in a boat, instead of returning to Jericho, my desire was to go down the borders of the sea, and turn up among the mountains to the convent of Santa Saba. At Jerusalem I could not hire horses for this convent, because, as they said, it was a dangerous route; and I took them for Jericho, hoping in some way or other still to accomplish my object. By accident, an Arab from Santa Saba had come to Jericho during the night; and in the morning I told the aga and his companion that I would not have them as my escort at all, unless they would go with me to the convent. They at first objected, but afterward promised to go as far as I wanted them; now they again made objections. I thought it was merely to enhance the value of their services; but in a few moments they told me they would not go any farther; that the order of the governor was to protect me to the Dead Sea and back to Jericho. The worst of it was,