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.
Just below the large pool, by a smaller one, a Greek boy, having bathed,
is about to dress, and I am interested to watch the process. The first
article to go on is a white shirt; over this he puts on two blue woollen
shirts; he then draws on a pair of large, loose trousers; into these
the shirts are tucked, and the trousers are tied at the waist,—he is
bothered with neither pins nor buttons. Then comes the turban, which is
a soft gray and yellow material; a red belt is next wound twice about
the waist; the vest is yellow and open in front; and the costume is
completed by a jaunty jacket of yellow, prettily embroidered. The heap
of clothes on the bank did not promise much, but the result is a very
handsome boy, dressed, I am sure, most comfortably for this climate.
While I sit here the son of the sheykh rides his horse to the pool. He
is not more than ten years old, is very smartly dressed in gay colors,
and exceedingly handsome, although he has somewhat the supercilious
manner of a lad born in the purple. The little prince speaks French,
and ostentatiously displays in his belt a big revolver. I am glad of the
opportunity of seeing one of the desert robbers in embryo.