sweet embrace, and moaning, muttered thunders rehearsed the weary day. The tents were struck. Artoosh, sheik of sheiks, leaped into his saddle, and the beautiful mare paced slowly away 5 from the camp and led us toward Jericho. The little stream called after me, rilling cool music through the leaves - softer ever, and farther, until I heard it no more. The path wound among the bushes upon the plain. A few large raindrops fell with heavy distinctness upon the 10 leaves. No birds sang, as they sing all day in dead, sunny Jerusalem. There were no houses, no flocks, no men or women. We came to a grain tract that waved luxuriantly to the horses' bellies, and out of the grain, upon a little elevation, arose a solitary, ruined tower. 15 It was the site of Jericho — the City of Palms, as Moses called it—and, although desolate now, palms were seen in the year 700 by Bishop Arculf, and in 1102 by Sewulf, and the Crusaders found under them singular flowers, which they called Jericho roses. We saw no roses nor 20 palms. We saw only a cluster of sad stone hovels; waneyed men stared at us like specters from the doors, and the scene was lonely and forlorn. Yet near one hovel a group of young fig trees was blossoming, as fairly as ever the figs and roses could have blossomed in the gardens of 25 Jericho, before the seven rams were yeaned, and Joshua was a beardless boy, in Israel's camp by the Red Sea. The elevation upon which stands the tower commands the plain, and a more memorable or remarkable landscape seen under such a sky is nowhere beheld. 30 The vast reach of the plain lay silent and shadowed, as in early twilight, from the gleaming level of the Dead Sea on the south to the mountains that closed the valley upon the north. Westward lay the hills of Judea, and to the east the Moab Mountains. Lower lines of nearer eastern hills rolled and curved before us. Over all hung the lurid sky. Vague thunder still shook the awed hush 5 of morning, and far over the Dead Sea, into the dense blackness that absorbed at the south its burnished water, fiery flashes darted. Glimpses of pallid blue sky struggled overhead in the crimson vortex of vapor, and died into the clouds. Upon the tops of all the bushy trees near us 10 sat solemn-eyed eagles and vultures, silent, with fixed. stare, like birds of prey dismally expectant. But suddenly, like those who descry life in the midst of death, we saw the green trees that fringe the Jordan, and the whole party bounded at full speed over the plain. 15 Beautiful, bowery Jordan! Its swift, turbid stream eddied and fled through the valley, defying its death with eager motion, and with the low gurgling song of living water. It is very narrow - not more, at that season, than a hundred feet wide — and it has channeled a deep bed in 20 the soft earth, so that you do not see it until you stand on the very verge of the bank. Balsam poplars, willows, and oleanders lean over it, shrinking from the inexorable plain behind, clustering into it with trembling foliage, and arching it with green, as if tree and river had sworn forlorn 25 friendship in that extremity of solitude. Beautiful, bowery Jordan! Yet you are sad as you stand dipping your feet in its water, sad as you watch this brave son of Lebanon rushing, tumultuously triumphant, like a victor in the race, rushing and reeling with 30 terror and delight, and in a moment to be hushed and Your eyes choked in the bosom of the neighboring sea. rove from the water to the trees that overhang it, with almost a human sympathy, and those trees are figures as lithe and pensive to your imagination as the daughters of 5 Babylon who wept hopelessly by other waters. So leave it singing under trees in your memory forever. And when in after days you sit, on quiet summer Sundays, in the church, and hear the story of the baptism, the forms around you will melt in the warm air; and 10 once more those trees will overlean, once more those waters sing, and the Jordan, a vague name to others, shall be a line of light in your memory. Artoosh turned to the south and away from the river which bends toward the Moab Mountains. We rode for 15 an hour over the soft, floorlike, shrub-dotted plain and to the shore of the Dead Sea. It lay like molten lead, heavily still under the clouds, a stretch of black water gleaming under muttering thunder. Its shores are bare mountain precipices. No tree 20 grows upon the bank; no sail shines upon the sea; no wave or ghostly ripple laps the beach, only dead driftwood is strewn along the shore. No bird flew over; even the wind had died away. Moaning thunder only was the evidence of life in nature. My horse stooped to 25 the clear water, but did not drink. It was a spot accursed. Did Cain skulk along this valley, leaving Abel in the field? We tasted the water; it is inconceivably bitter and salt. Sea water is mild in the comparison. None of us 30 bathed. Not only the stickiness and saltness, but a feel ing of horror, repelled me. Haply the sins of Sodom and k: the head of an Arab clan or tribe. Bĕd'ou in: one nomadic, or wandering, tribes of the Arabs. They live Es and have no fixed dwelling place. Pûrs'ès: according rkish valuation, a sum of money equal to twenty or y-five dollars. She lived there: Mary, the sister of LazSee John xii. 1-8. Elisha's brook: Elijah's brook, CheÄr'culf: a French priest who explored the Holy Land › eighth century. Se'wulf. Daughters of Babylon: the nce here is to the Jewish seventy years' captivity in on. See Psalm cxxxvii. Sŏd'om and Go mor'räh: two it cities destroyed on account of the wickedness of their itants. See Genesis xix. 24, 25. And we will sit upon the rocks, And I will make thee beds of roses, A gown made of the finest wool A belt of straw and ivy buds, The shepherd swains shall dance and sing Măd'ri galş: little love poems. |