# On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt/Chapter 23

Contents
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE DEAD SEA AND THE JORDAN — JERICHO.
At Bethlehem we were within six miles of Jerusalem, but we did not enter it that day, nor yet on the morrow: for Dr. Post, who is familiar with the geography of the country, suggested that it would be an economy of time, and of our facilities of travel, while we had our horses and mules and complete camp equipage, to make a detour to the Dead Sea and the Jordan, an excursion of two or three days; so that on reaching Jerusalem, we could dismiss our rather expensive retinue, and give ourselves up to seeing the sights of the Holy City. Accordingly we despatched Yohanna with all speed to Jerusalem for our letters, while we were seeing Bethlehem, and in the afternoon took horse for the Dead Sea. Hardly were we in the saddle before we sprang off again: for we had come to the famous well by the gate of Bethlehem, of which David, who had often tasted its sweetness, so desired to drink that his three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, at the peril of their lives, to bring him a draught. To this well the daughters of Bethlehem still come to fill the jars which they balance so gracefully on their shoulders. One was even now at the place, and at our request drew up water from the well and gave us to drink. It was a trifling incident, but a pleasant one, thus to have water given us to drink from the Well of David at the hand of a maiden of the Hill Country.
Keeping on our way, we soon left Bethlehem behind. ​As we got out of the town, and our little company stretched out in single file, I observed that we had an addition to our party in a mounted guard. It is a significant token of the utter absence of protection in this country under the rule of the Sultan, that a traveller cannot go thirty miles from Jerusalem, to the Dead Sea or the Jordan, without an armed escort. Parties may venture unattended, but they do it at their own risk. The Bedaween, who occupy these hills and valleys, consider it as their "stamping-ground," and that they have a right to levy toll on travellers. It is a thing perfectly understood, and every party pays a certain sum — a kind of blackmail — to the sheikh of the tribe, for which he guarantees its safety. Without it, his own retainers would be the first to rob the unprotected traveller. Understanding so well from our past experience the law of the desert, we were well pleased to see a fine athletic Arab, well mounted and well armed, ride to the front, and thus assume to be the "body-guard" of our party. He was mounted on a light, active pony, and had slung on his back a double-barrelled gun that looked as though it might do execution in case of necessity.
The country we entered soon after leaving Bethlehem, furnished the most perfect contrast to the terraced slopes, covered with figtrees and vines, which gave such beauty to the City of David. It was a succession of brown, barren hills, to which the only relief was in the myriads of wild flowers, and in occasional glimpses of the waters of the Dead Sea, which appeared far below us in the basin of the mountains. In its general aspect the region was almost as desolate as the desert itself, and indeed its claim to that character is indicated in the name it bears, for we are now entering the Wilderness of Judea — the scene of the ministry of John the Baptist.
After three or four hours of this rough riding, of ​ascents and descents, climbing the heights and going down into the depths, as we rose to the summit of one of these barren hills, we looked down into a deep gorge, in which stood a Convent, whose position and appearance at once reminded us of that at Mount Sinai, having quite as much the look of a fortress as of a Convent. It is built on the edge of a precipice. The brook Kedron, that flows under the walls of Jerusalem, forcing a passage, not westward to the Mediterranean, but east to the Dead Sea, has in the lapse of ages worn a channel hundreds of feet in depth, like a cañon of the Rocky Mountains. Although the chasm is not so wide, yet the cliffs are not unlike those one may see along the brink of the Niagara River. Here has been built with infinite labor a huge structure spreading over perhaps an acre of ground, which in its day was a famous monastery. It is fourteen hundred years old, having been founded in the fifth century. Saint Saba, who gives it its name, must have belonged to the Church militant, if what tradition says be true, that on this very spot he attacked a lion in his den, like another Samson, and after slaying the beast, took possession of his den as a cell. Another version of the story is, that instead of killing the lion, he subdued him by his saintly life and his prayers, so that man and beast occupied the same cell, and lived in perfect harmony. The reader can take his choice of these two stories; no doubt one is as true as the other. Here in this lair of a wild beast the old fighting anchorite gathered round him a large community of monks. In modern times it has sadly dwindled, numbering now only some three-score, who are cloistered or imprisoned here. We were told afterwards in Jerusalem that it was a sort of ecclesiastical penitentiary to which rebellious priests or monks were exiled to do penance for their sins — or perhaps for their virtues, for they would be quite as likely to ​be sent there if they showed too much zeal; if their ardor in their sacred office or fervor in preaching should suggest an unfavorable contrast with their ecclesiastical superiors. Nothing would be more likely to subdue any excess of enthusiasm, to cool the ardor of a young apostle or the fervor of his eloquence, than the silence of one of these monks' cells. He might pace up and down the walls that overhang the depth below, and preach to the jackals that make their holes in the rocks on the other side of the abyss; but he would not be likely to disturb the composure of "His Beatitude," the Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem.
The Convent serves also, in case of need, the purpose of a caravanserai, not only for pilgrims to the Jordan, but for ordinary travellers. The monks were quite willing to give us lodgings, but we preferred our own clean beds and the fresh air of our tents. We had, however, the full range of the interior, going up-stairs and down-stairs, and even on the roof, as well as through the prison-like quarters of the holy fathers.
One token of the peculiar sacredness of this monastery, is that it is jealously guarded against the intrusion of the other sex. No woman must enter its sacred precincts. I fear the holy fathers would be sorely scandalized if any roguish traveller were to drop a lady's slipper in the court. How quickly it would be thrown over the walls into the chasm of the Brook Kedron, unless perchance it fell under the eye of some poor monk who had left in him a touch of human feeling, and who might, if unobserved by his brethren, snatch it up and hide it in the folds of his coarse robe and take it to his cell, and there shed bitter tears at the thought of the happy days of his childhood, when it was not a sin to look in the warm and loving face of his mother or sister.
​But this suggestion is quite too romantic, and too human for the monks of Mar Saba, in whom every vestige of our common nature was long since dried up and withered away. Never have I seen such bloodless specimens of humanity. No wonder that they are so, shut up within these walls where the sunlight strikes them but a few hours a day. They are like plants in a cellar — wasted and withered. As Madame Roland exclaimed on her way to the guillotine, "Liberty! what crimes are committed in thy name," so here we have to exhaust every exclamation of horror and surprise at the unutterable follies committed in the name of Religion.
It is very evident that women are not admitted here; if they were, they would soon bring a glow of sunshine into the place, instead of leaving it dark, dingy, and musty as it is! If I were Patriarch of Jerusalem, I would reverse the order of things, and turn out the monks, and leave it solely to the other sex. If it were taken possession of by a company of nuns, or sisters of charity, they would soon renovate it, and give it a look of cleanliness and comfort, that would make it a place fit for human habitation.
But sunlight gilds even prison walls, at least the outside of them, and when the sun rose over the mountains of Moab, and shone into these deep gorges, it lighted up the old Convent with a kind of glory, that set us all alert and aglow as we mounted our ponies and picked our way along the edge of the cliff by a narrow path walled in by a parapet to keep us from going over the precipice — a depth of six hundred feet — till our horses' hoofs rattled down into the rocky bed of the Kedron. Our mounted guard rode ahead, with eye and ear alert, as if he might spy an enemy lurking behind the rocks. We were told that there was less danger now than there might have been a few weeks before, as the Bedaween had but lately ​driven their flocks across the Jordan into the land of Bashan for pasturage.
On emerging from the gorge of the Kedron, we found the character of the country the same as yesterday; the same succession of ascents and descents, the same clambering over rugged hills, winding around heights, and descending steep declivities; till gradually we came down to the level of the Dead Sea.
The ride took us five hours, and was very fatiguing. In the early morning, while the air was fresh, it was exhilarating; but as the sun rose higher, striking full on the slopes of the hills and into the deep valleys, the heat became intense, so that by eleven o'clock we were glad to take refuge in a clump of bushes, where we could get a little shade and an hour's rest, after which we mounted again and rode on to the shore.
My first impression of the Dead Sea was one of surprise at its beauty. Its very name seemed to be equivalent to the Sea of Death. Indeed it had been supposed that its life began with death; that its existence dated from an act of destruction, when the Cities of the Plain were destroyed by fire from heaven; and naturally I thought of it as a dull, sluggish, almost stagnant, body of water, lying in a "plain," which was not a garden of fertility, but a sandy desert, with perhaps here and there scattered fragments upon the shore, the melancholy tokens of its utter desolation. This idea vanishes at the first glimpse caught from the side of the mountains. Instead of the black waters of Death, we looked down upon a deep blue expanse that had all the beauty of the Scotch or Swiss lakes. Its one unique feature is its extreme depression on the earth's surface, for it is the lowest body of water on the globe, lying thirteen hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean. But this rather ​increases the effect of the glassy surface, glistening like a mirror so far down in the depths of the earth, and deepens the tranquil beauty of the mountain-guarded lake.
If we had been surprised at the beauty of the Dead Sea, not less so were we at the mountains of Moab, to which writers and painters have hardly done justice. Their apparent height is of course greatly increased by the depression of the sea beneath. Rising up so steeply, they cast a deep shadow on the waters which lie so far below. It is a grand chain of mountains, clothed with that rich purple tint which gives such beauty to the Apennines, as seen in the journey from Florence to Home. But these summits have associations such as do not belong to the Alban Hills, or any range seen from the Campagna: for it was here that Moses came to take his first and only view of the Promised Land, and to die. Scholars are divided as to the precise point of the chain which is Mount Nebo, and which is the peak of Pisgah; but it could not have been far away, for it was "over against Jericho," and so must have been within the sweep of the eye, as we look up from the shore of the Dead Sea. Other associations carry us back far before the death of Moses to the time when Abraham and Lot pastured their flocks in the plain whose cities were destroyed.
Of course superstition which is busy everywhere in Palestine, could not forego such an opportunity for legends and imaginary terrors as was furnished by a lake that was supposed to roll over buried cities. It has been said that the waters are so leaden that they lie in a dead calm, which no mountain breeze can stir into a ripple; and that birds cannot fly over a surface from which are supposed to rise poisonous exhalations. This latter fancy is not peculiar to the Dead Sea. In Ireland, a few miles out of Dublin, is a glen embosomed in the hills, enclosing a ​loch which is invested with the same charm of superstition. Moore has introduced the legend in a little poem, beginning
"By that lake whose gloomy shore
Skylark never warbles o'er."
An Irish peasant gravely assured me that no skylark had flown over it in thirteen hundred years! He spoke with as much assurance as if his memory extended over the whole of that period. It is a pity that such poetic fancies have to disappear before the prose of fact. But the legend is just as true in regard to the Irish lake as to the Dead Sea. If I had had the faith of a true believer, it would have been unfortunate that just as we rode down to the shore, birds, startled at our approach, took wing and flew directly over these deadly waters; and that a puff of wind, that came down from the hills, should have set the lake in motion, so that the waves came rippling up the beach, as if they had been the clear waters of our own Lake George. But when we came to bathe in the Dead Sea, we found it indeed of very unusual weight and density, though not exactly lead; and when, to make a final test of its quality, we took a swallow into our mouths, ugh! it tasted of Sodom and Gomorrah!
Mounting our horses after our bath, we rode along the beach around the head of the lake, to the mouth of the Jordan, which here flows through a long and level stretch of sand, which it has thrown up in its annual floods, till at last the impetuous stream checks its swift current as if folding its robes to die with dignity, before it is quite swallowed up and lost. This sandy shore is not hard like a pebbled beach, and the horses' hoofs began to sink under us, so that we had to dismount and make our way on foot, but we kept on, not content till we stood at the very point of junction, where the rapid river, whose every motion has been full of life, at last dies in the Dead Sea.
​Retracing our steps, we mounted again, and turned northward to the Fords of the Jordan. As we could not keep along the liver bank because of the dense jungle, we struck directly across the plain. The thick growth of reeds and rushes hides the river, but as we could see where it was flowing, it was easy to form a general idea of its character. The Jordan is born among the hills, having its source at the base of Hermon, from which it bursts forth like the streams that issue from the glaciers of the Alps, with all the fury of a mountain torrent. This character it preserves throughout its course, darting on swiftly like "the arrowy Rhone." Its rapid current gives it a force which is sometimes very destructive, but for all that it can hardly boast of the majesty of our broader but more slow-moving rivers. I am afraid that our colored brethren, who sing with such fervor
"I want to go to heaven when I die,
To hear old Jordan roll,"
would be a little disappointed were they to see "old Jordan," and find that it did not roll — for it has nothing of the peculiar swell and movement and sound of waves — but it rushes, if that will do. It rises so rapidly when the rains come or the snows melt on the sides of Hermon, that it sweeps everything before it, so that there is a peculiar aptness in the question of Jeremiah: "If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? And if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they have wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?"
After an hour's ride across the plain, we came to a more open space, where the jungle on the river side parted so as to allow us to come down to the brink, and we found ourselves at the spot which is generally held to be the scene of our Saviour's baptism. Whether the tradition is founded ​in truth, may well be doubted. But, at any rate, this is devoutly believed to be the spot, and as such it is the most frequented place of pilgrimage in the valley of the Jordan. Here the pilgrims come by tens of thousands every year, rushing into the stream, like the Hindoos into the Ganges, as if the least touch of its holy waters were sufficient to wash away sin. We too bathed like the rest, though with no such sense of its miraculous virtue. However we may smile at a too easy credulity, no Christian can come to this place on the banks of the Jordan without emotion at the thought that he is perhaps on the very spot, where our Saviour stood while the Baptist poured the waters on His sacred head, and the Spirit descending like a dove rested upon Him, and a voice was heard from the cloud saying "This is My beloved Son!"
From the place of baptism, it is a two hours ride to Jericho. If, as is probable, Joshua crossed the Jordan at or near this point, we were now following the line of his march to his first battle and his first victory. The plain is not much more secure now than in the days of the Hebrew leader; for though in the course of centuries it has been swept by countless armies — by the Egyptian, the Babylonian, the Roman, the Moslem, and the Crusader — yet it is to this day a lurking-place of the Bedaween, who often despoil pilgrims and unprotected travellers.
That afternoon's ride was a fearful one because of the heat. The sun poured down on the plain as on the desert, and indeed it is like a desert in its desolate character. The soil is fertile, and yet it produces little, simply for want of irrigation, while on the border of the plain is a river which might be made to overflow it as the Nile overflows the valley of Egypt. The Doctor, who has a quick eye for utilizing natural resources, immediately had a plan for ​reclaiming this waste, and explained how, by the use of an American invention, the swift-rushing Jordan could be made to lift itself up in volume sufficient to water the whole plain. With this it would be a paradise of beauty, for the depression of the basin of the Jordan and the Dead Sea is such as to give it a tropical climate, and with a supply of water it would have a tropical vegetation. What it might become is shown by what it now is on that side of the valley where water reaches it, for as we come nigh unto Jericho, the springs which burst out of the hills, and flow through natural and artificial channels, cause all the products of the earth to flourish luxuriantly. We rode through gardens and orchards, whose abundant growth gave assurance of what the country might again become with proper cultivation.
The name of Jericho (City of Palms) is pleasantly suggestive of its ancient beauty. Irrigated and cultivated as its environs then were, it may well have been embowered in palms, which would not grow in the Hill Country around Jerusalem. Alas! not a palm grows here now! And yet the region around it retains its natural fertility, and if "well watered" might again be what it once was, "as the garden of the Lord."
But Jericho is a place, like so many others in the East, where
"All save the spirit of man is divine."
It is hardly possible to imagine the poverty and wretchedness of the inhabitants, whose filth and squalor are in keeping with the mud-huts in which they live. This must be the Jericho to which we sometimes dismiss "friends" whose presence we do not absolutely require. How often have I wished one and another of my acquaintances — I will not say my enemies — "in Jericho"! It is the general limbo to which we consign all bores and ​uncomfortable people. And now I was "in Jericho" myself. It is not surprising that I was rather impatient to get out of it. So we hastened on through the town, to some spot where we could enjoy the beauty of nature. This we found close under the cliffs which form a background for the plains, from the foot of which gushes what bears the suggestive name of the Fountain of Elisha. The fountain is a full one, discharging such a volume of water as keeps a stream flowing, which is carried through the gardens and orchards.
On the bank above this fountain we pitched our tents, glad to rest after a day of great fatigue, rendered more oppressive by the over-powering heat. It was a grateful change to sit in our tent door in the cool of the day, and listen to the murmur of the fountain under our feet. The sun had sunk behind the hills, and now the moon, which we had seen as a pale crescent hanging over the Moslem camp at Nukhl, had grown in fulness, and crept upward in the heavens till it hung directly over our heads. How it softened the outline of the mountains of Moab, and even threw a misty veil over the wretched town, slumbering under its dense foliage!
We had been told that one of the things to see, or rather to hear, at Jericho, was the peculiar music of the people, who had some rude native airs, to which they chanted a song and executed a kind of war dance. Not wishing to miss an opportunity to hear some real Arab music — a thing we had not heard in all our wanderings on the desert — we sent for these singers, and about eight o'clock some twenty of them, men and women and children, marched up to the front of our tent, and standing in a line, began their unique performance, which consisted of a quick motion of all together, swaying their bodies and swinging their arms up and down, keeping time to these ​movements with a kind of grunt. While this went on, the leader flourished a drawn sword in their faces, it being a point of skill to come as near as possible without touching them. Every few moments one or another would quit the ranks and rush up to me with a piercing shriek and yell, which they hissed in my very ears. After a few moments I thought I had had enough of this "concert," and told the dragoman that he might tell them the Howadji was satisfied. "What shall I give them?" I asked; to which Yohanna, who always liked to play the prince with other people's money, replied in a careless sort of way "Give them a napoleon — four medjidies" (Turkish dollars); to which I immediately responded by handing over the money, which was probably four times what any one used to the ways of the country would have given. "A fool and his money are soon parted." It is in this way that "high art" is patronized by travellers in the land of the East. The fellows went off in great glee, probably thinking they had caught "a green one." I heard them shouting all the way down to Jericho. However, I was glad to have them depart, much better pleased with a chorus which now filled my ears, and which was genuine, home-made music. It was the croaking of the frogs, which rose up from all the plain, and in which there was more music than in the throats of all the Arabs from here to Mount Sinai.
While this was going on, the muleteers had been sitting round their camp-fires, smoking their pipes. At length the fires burned low, and they dropped off to slumber, while we lay down in our tent, with the flood of moonlight pouring over us, and the sound of rushing waters to lull us to rest.