Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land Part 8

Tradition calls this the Brook Cherith, where Elijah hid himself from Ahab, and was fed by Arabs of a tribe called "the Ravens." But the prophet's hiding-place was certainly on the other side of the Jordan, and this Wadi is probably the Valley of Achor, spoken of in the Book of Joshua. On the opposite side of the canon, half-way down the face of the precipice, clings the monastery of Saint George, one of the pious penitentiaries to which the Greek Church a.s.signs unruly and criminal monks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Great Monastery of St. George.]

As we emerge from the narrow valley a great view opens before us: to the right, the blue waters of the Dead Sea, like a mirror of burnished steel; in front, the immense plain of the Jordan, with the dark-green ribbon of the river-jungle winding through its length and the purple mountains of Gilead and Moab towering beyond it; to the left, the furrowed gray and yellow ridges and peaks of the northern "wilderness"

of Judea, the wild country into which Jesus retired alone after the baptism by John in the Jordan.

One of these peaks, the Quarantana, is supposed to be the "high mountain" from which the Tempter showed Jesus the "kingdoms of the world." In the foreground of that view, sweeping from the snowy summits of Hermon in the north, past the Greek cities of Pella and Scythopolis, down the vast valley with its wealth of palms and balsams, must have stood the Roman city of Jericho, with its imperial farms and the palaces, baths and theatres of Herod the Great,--a visible image of what Christ might have won for Himself if He had yielded to the temptation and turned from the pathway of spiritual light to follow the shadows of earthly power and glory.

Herod's Jericho has vanished; there is nothing left of it but the outline of one of the great pools which he built to irrigate his gardens. The modern Jericho is an unhappy little adobe village, lying a mile or so farther to the east. A mile to the north, near a copious fountain of pure water, called the Sultan's Spring, is the site of the oldest Jericho, which Joshua conquered and Hiel rebuilt. The spring, which is probably the same that Elisha cleansed with salt (II Kings ii: 19-22), sends forth a merry stream to turn a mill and irrigate a group of gardens full of oranges, figs, bananas, grapes, feathery bamboos and rosy oleanders. But the ancient city is buried under a great mound of earth, which the German _Palastina-Verein_ is now excavating.

As we come up to the mound I pull out my little camera and prepare to take a picture of the hundred or so dusty Arabs--men, women and children--who are at work in the trenches. A German _gelehrter_ in a very excited state rushes up to me and calls upon me to halt, in the name of the Emperor. The taking of pictures by persons not imperially authorised is _streng verboten_. He is evidently prepared to be abusive, if not actually violent, until I a.s.sure him, in the best German that I can command, that I have no political or archaeological intentions, and that if the photographing of his picturesque work-people to him displeasing is, I will my camera immediately in its pocket put. This mollifies him, and he politely shows us what he is doing.

A number of ruined houses, and a sort of central temple, with a rude flight of steps leading up to it, have been discovered. A portion of what seems to be the city-wall has just been laid bare. If there are any inscriptions or relics of any value they are kept secret; but there is plenty of broken pottery of a common kind. It is all very poor and beggarly looking; no carving nor even any hewn stones. The buildings seem to be of rubble, and "the walls of Jericho" are little better than the stone fences on a Connecticut farm. No wonder they fell down at the blast of Joshua's rams' horns and the rush of his fierce tribesmen.

We ride past the gardens and through the shady lanes to our camp, on the outskirts of the modern village. The air is heavy and languid, full of relaxing influence, an air of sloth and luxury, seeming to belong to some strange region below the level of human duty and effort as far as it is below the level of the sea. The fragrance of the orange-blossoms, like a subtle incense of indulgence, floats on the evening breeze.

Veiled figures pa.s.s us in the lanes, showing l.u.s.trous eyes. A sound of Oriental music and laughter and clapping hands comes from one of the houses in an inclosure hedged with acacia-trees. We sit in the door of our tent at sundown and dream of the vanished palm-groves, the gardens of Cleopatra, the palaces of Herod, the soft, ign.o.ble history of that region of fertility and indolence, rich in harvests, poor in manhood.

Then it seems as if some one were saying, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." There they stand, all about us: eastward, the great purple ranges of Gad and Reuben, from which Elijah the Tishbite descended to rebuke and warn Israel; westward, against the saffron sky, the ridges and peaks of Judea, among which Amos and Jeremiah saw their lofty visions; northward, the clear-cut pinnacle of Sartoba, and far away beyond it the dim outlines of the Galilean hills from which Jesus of Nazareth came down to open blind eyes and to shepherd wandering souls. With the fading of the sunset glow a deep blue comes upon all the mountains, a blue which strangely seems to grow paler as the sky above them darkens, sinking down upon them through infinite gradations of azure into something mysterious and indescribable, not a color, not a shadow, not a light, but a secret hyaline illumination which transforms them into aerial battlements and ramparts, on whose edge the great stars rest and flame, the watch-fires of the Eternal.

III

"Pa.s.sING OVER JORDAN"

I have often wondered why the Jordan, which plays such an important part in the history of the Hebrews, receives so little honour and praise in their literature. Sentimental travellers and poets of other races have woven a good deal of florid prose and verse about the name of this river. There is no doubt that it is the chief stream of Palestine, the only one, in fact, that deserves to be called a river. Yet the Bible has no song of loving pride for the Jordan; no tender and beautiful words to describe it; no record of the longing of exiled Jews to return to the banks of their own river and hear again the voice of its waters. At this strange silence I have wondered much, not knowing the reason of it.

Now I know.

The Jordan is not a little river to be loved: it is a barrier to be pa.s.sed over. From its beginning in the marshes of Huleh to its end in the Dead Sea, (excepting only the lovely interval of the Lake of Galilee), this river offers nothing to man but danger and difficulty, perplexity and trouble. Fierce and sullen and intractable, it flows through a long depression, at the bottom of which it has dug for itself a still deeper crooked ditch, along the Eastern border of Galilee and Samaria and Judea, as if it wished to cut them off completely. There are no pleasant places along its course, no breezy forelands where a man might build a house with a fair outlook over flowing water, no rich and tranquil coves where the cattle would love to graze, or stand knee-deep in the quiet stream. There is no sense of leisure, of refreshment, of kind companions.h.i.+p and friendly music about the Jordan. It is in a hurry and a secret rage. Yet there is something powerful, self-reliant, inevitable about it. In thousands of years it has changed less than any river in the world. It is a flowing, everlasting symbol of division, of separation: a river of solemn meetings and partings like that of Elijah and Elisha, of Jesus and John the Baptist: a type of the narrow stream of death. It seems to say to man, "Cross me if you will, if you can; and then go your way."

The road that leads us from Jericho toward the river is pleasant enough, at first, for the early sunlight is gentle and caressing, and there is a cool breeze moving across the plain. It is hard to believe that we are eight hundred feet below the sea this morning, and still travelling downward. The lush fields of barley, watered by many channels from the brook Kelt, are waving and glistening around us. Quails are running along the edge of the road, appearing and disappearing among the thick grain-stalks. The bulbuls warble from the thorn-bushes, and a crested hoopoo croons in a jujube-tree. Larks are on the wing, scattering music.

We are on the upper edge of that great belt of sunken land between the mountains of Gilead and the mountains of Ephraim and Judah, which reaches from the Lake of Galilee to the Dead Sea, and which the Arabs call _El-Ghor_, the "Rift." It is a huge trench, from three to fourteen miles wide, sinking from six hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean, at the northern end, to thirteen hundred feet below, at the southern end. The surface is fairly level, sloping gently from each side toward the middle, and the soil is of an inexhaustible fertility, yielding abundant crops wherever it is patiently irrigated from the streams which flow out of the mountains east and west, but elsewhere lying baked and arid under the heavy, close, feverous air. No strong race has ever inhabited this trench as a home; no great cities have ever grown here, and its civilization, such as it had, was a hot-bed product, soon ripe and quickly rotten.

We have pa.s.sed beyond the region of greenness already; the little water-brooks have ceased to gleam through the grain: the wild gra.s.ses and weeds have a parched and yellow look: the freshness of the early morning has vanished, and we are descending through a desolate land of sour and leprous hills of clay and marl, eroded by the floods into fantastic shapes, furrowed and scarred and scabbed with mineral refuse.

The gullies are steep and narrow: the heat settles on them like a curse.

Through this battered and crippled region, the centre of the Jordan Valley, runs the Jordan Bed, twisting like a big green serpent. A dense half-tropical jungle, haunted by wild beasts and poisonous reptiles and insects, conceals, almost at every point, the down-rus.h.i.+ng, swirling, yellow flood.

It has torn and desolated its own sh.o.r.es with sudden spates. The feet of the pilgrims who bathe in it sink into the mud as they wade out waist-deep, and if they venture beyond the shelter of the bank the whirling eddies threaten to sweep them away. The fords are treacherous, with s.h.i.+fting bottom and changing currents. The poets and prophets of the Old Testament give us a true idea of this uninhabitable and unlovable river-bed when they speak of "the pride of Jordan," "the swellings of Jordan," where the lion hides among the reeds in his secret lair, a "refuge of lies," which the "overflowing scourge" shall sweep away.

No, it was not because the Jordan was beautiful that John the Baptist chose it as the scene of his preaching and ministry, but because it was wild and rude, an emblem of violent and sudden change, of irrevocable parting, of death itself, and because in its one gift of copious and unfailing water, he found the necessary element for his deep baptism of repentance, in which the sinful past of the crowd who followed him was to be symbolically immersed and buried and washed away.

At the place where we reach the water there is an open bit of ground; a miserable hovel gives shelter to two or three Turkish soldiers; an ungainly latticed bridge, stilted on piles of wood, straddles the river with a single span. The toll is three piastres, (about twelve cents,) for a man and horse.

The only place from which I can take a photograph of the river is the bridge itself, so I thrust the camera through one of the diamond-shaped openings on the lattice-work and try to make a truthful record of the lower Jordan at its best. Imagine the dull green of the tangled thickets, the ragged clumps of reeds and water-gra.s.ses, the sombre and silent flow of the fulvous water sliding and curling down out of the jungle, and the implacable fervour of the pallid, searching sunlight heightening every touch of ugliness and desolation, and you will understand why the Hebrew poets sang no praise of the Jordan, and why Naaman the Syrian thought scorn of it when he remembered the lovely and fruitful rivers of Damascus.

_A PSALM OF RIVERS_

_The rivers of G.o.d are full of water: They are wonderful in the renewal of their strength: He poureth them out from a hidden fountain._

_They are born among the hills in the high places: Their cradle is in the bosom of the rocks: The mountain is their mother and the forest is their father._

_They are nourished among the long gra.s.ses: They receive the tribute of a thousand springs: The rain and the snow are a heritage for them._

_They are glad to be gone from their birthplace: With a joyful noise they hasten away: They are going forever and never departed._

_The courses of the rivers are all appointed: They roar loudly but they follow the road: The finger of G.o.d hath marked their pathway._

_The rivers of Damascus rejoice among their gardens: The great river of Egypt is proud of his s.h.i.+ps: The Jordan is lost in the Lake of Bitterness._

_Surely the Lord guideth them every one in his wisdom: In the end he gathereth all their drops on high: He sendeth them forth again in the clouds of mercy._

_O my G.o.d, my life runneth away like a river: Guide me, I beseech thee, in a pathway of good: Let me flow in blessing to my rest in thee._

VIII

A JOURNEY TO JERASH

I

THROUGH THE LAND OF GILEAD

I never heard of Jerash until my friend the Archaeologist told me about it, one night when we were sitting beside my study fire at Avalon. "It is the site of the old city of Gerasa," said he. "The most satisfactory ruins that I have ever seen."

There was something suggestive and potent in that phrase, "satisfactory ruins." For what is it that weaves the charm of ruins? What do we ask of them to make their magic complete and satisfying? There must be an element of picturesqueness, certainly, to take the eye with pleasure in the contrast between the frailty of man's works and the imperishable loveliness of nature. There must also be an element of age; for new ruins are painful, disquieting, intolerable; they speak of violence and disorder; it is not until the bloom of antiquity gathers upon them that the relics of vast and splendid edifices attract us and subdue us with a spell, breathing tranquillity and n.o.ble thoughts. There must also be an element of magnificence in decay, of symmetry broken but not destroyed, a touch of delicate art and workmans.h.i.+p, to quicken the imagination and evoke the ghost of beauty haunting her ancient habitations. And beyond these things I think there must be two more qualities in a ruin that satisfies us: a clear connection with the greatness and glory of the past, with some fine human achievement, with some heroism of men dead and gone; and last of all, a spirit of mystery, the secret of some unexplained catastrophe, the lost link of a story never to be fully told.

This, or something like it, was what the Archaeologist's phrase seemed to promise me as we watched the glowing embers on the hearth of Avalon. And it is this promise that has drawn me, with my three friends, on this April day into the Land of Gilead, riding to Jerash.

The grotesque and rickety bridge by which we have crossed the Jordan soon disappears behind us, as we trot along the winding bridle-path through the river-jungle, in the stifling heat. Coming out on the open plain, which rises gently toward the east, we startle great flocks of storks into the air, and they swing away in languid circles, dappling the blaze of morning with their black-tipped wings. Grotesque, ungainly, gothic birds, they do not seem to belong to the Orient, but rather to have drifted hither out of some quaint, familiar fairy tale of the North; and indeed they are only transient visitors here, and will soon be on their way to build their nests on the roofs of German villages and clapper their long, yellow bills over the joy of houses full of little children.

The rains of spring have spread a thin bloom of green over the plain.

Tender herbs and light gra.s.ses partly veil the gray and stony ground.

There is a month of scattered feeding for the flocks and herds. Away to the south, where the foot-hills begin to roll up suddenly from the Jordan, we can see a black line of Bedouin tents quivering through the heat.

Now the trail divides, and we take the northern fork, turning soon into the open mouth of the Wadi Shaib, a broad, gra.s.sy valley between high and treeless hills. The watercourse that winds down the middle of it is dry: nothing but a tumbled bed of gray rocks,--the bare bones of a little river. But as we ascend slowly the flowers increase; wild hollyhocks, and morning-glories, and clumps of blue anchusa, and scarlet adonis, and tall wands of white asphodel.

The morning grows hotter and hotter as we plod along. Presently we come up with three mounted Arabs, riding leisurely. Salutations are exchanged with gravity. Then the Arabs whisper something to each other and spur away at a great pace ahead of us--laughing. Why did they laugh?

Ah, now we know. For here is a lofty cliff on one side of the valley, hanging over just far enough to make a strip of cool shade at its base, with ferns and deep gra.s.s and a glimmer of dripping water. And here our wise Arabs are sitting at their ease to eat their mid-day meal under "the shadow of a great rock in a weary land."

Vainly we search the valley for another rock like that. It is the only one; and the Arabs laughed because they knew it. We must content ourselves with this little hill where a few hawthorn bushes offer us tiny islets of shade, beset with thorns, and separated by straits of intolerable glare. Here we eat a little, but without comfort; and sleep a little, but without refreshment; and talk a little, but restlessly. As soon as we dare, we get into the saddle again and toil up through the valley, now narrowing into a rugged gorge, crammed with ardent heat. The sprinkling of trees and bushes, the mult.i.tude of flowers, a.s.sure us that there must be moisture underground, along the bed of the stream; but above ground there is not a drop, and not a breath of wind to break the dead calm of the smothering air. Why did we come into this heat-trap?

But presently the ravine leads us, by steep stairs of rock, up to a high, green table-land. A heavenly breeze from the west is blowing here.

The fields are full of flowers--red anemones, white and yellow daisies, pink flax, little blue bell-flowers--a hundred kinds. One knoll is covered with cyclamens; another with splendid purple iris, immense blossoms, so dark that they look almost black against the gra.s.s; but hold them up to the sun and you will see the imperial colour. We have never found such wild flowers, not even on the Plain of Sharon; the hills around Jerusalem were but spa.r.s.ely adorned in comparison with these highlands of bloom.