The most gloomy and horrible place in the Holy Land is the Dead Sea. In
that place there once stood four wicked cities, and God destroyed them
with fire and brimstone.
You have heard of Sodom and Gomorrah.
A clergyman who went to visit the Dead Sea rode on horseback, and was
accompanied by men to guard him on the way, as there are robbers hid
among the rocks. He took some of the water of the Dead Sea in his mouth,
that he might taste it, and he found it salt and bitter; but he would not
swallow it, nor would he bathe in it.
He went next to look at the River Jordan. How different a place from the
dreary, desolate Dead Sea! Beautiful trees grow on the banks, and the
ends of the branches dip into the stream. The minister chose a part quite
covered with branches and bathed there, and as the waters went over his
head, he thought, "My Saviour was baptized in this river." But he did not
think, as many pilgrims do who come here every year, that his sins were
washed away by the water: no, he well knew that Christ's blood alone
cleanses from sin. There is a place where the Roman Catholics bathe, and
another where the Greeks bathe every year; they would not on any account
bathe in the same part, because they disagree so much.
After drinking some of the sweet soft water of Jordan, the minister
travelled from Jericho to Jerusalem. He went the very same way that the
good Samaritan travelled who once found a poor Jew lying half-killed by
thieves. Even to this day thieves often attack travellers in these parts:
because the way is so lonely, and so rugged, and so full of places where
thieves can hide themselves.
A horse must be a very good climber to carry a traveller along the steep,
rough, and narrow paths, and a traveller must be a bold man to venture to
go to the edge of the precipices, and near the robbers' caves.