"The dewy ground was dark and cold;
Behind all gloomy to behold;
And stepping eastward seemed to be
A kind of heavenly destiny."
W. Wordsworth

The Jericho hotels were closed for the season, but with the connivance of the negro caretaker and of an Arab in charge of the adjoining orange-gardens we obtained entrance at one, and managed to provide ourselves with firing and an excellent supper, and, subsequently, with beds. The Lady, who alone of the party carried a watch, heard the negro awakening the Professor next morning with the information that it was three o'clock, and added greatly to her popularity by being in a position to call out an assurance that it was only one, and that two hours' further repose was permissible. The building, it should be mentioned, being constructed mainly of wood and of mud bricks was well adapted for distant conversation.

{21} Three o'clock, however, duly arrived, all too soon, and by four o'clock we had breakfasted and were on our way across the sandy plain which stretches for about two hours between Jericho and the Jordan. A few faint streaks in the east promised the coming day, but it was still so dark that our horses required all our attention, as the plain is full of holes; twice over a silver gleam ahead warned us of fords to be crossed, and from time to time dark masses rose up before us, and those riding in advance called to the others to avoid the spreading branches of the jujube-tree, zizyphus lotus and zizyphus spina Christi, called by the Arabs nebk and sidr, which are the octopods of vegetable life, sending out long tentacles armed with fierce thorns, capable of subtracting your head-gear, entering your saddle, and imprisoning your horse.

The ride across the plain of Jordan, interesting at any time to persons of imagination, was unspeakably weird and suggestive in the morning twilight, but we differed as to whether the world in which we found ourselves was one in course of construction or of disintegration. Some of us were of opinion that the giant sand-hills—a labyrinth of marl and salt deposit, worn {22} by winds and washed by winter torrents, an old sea bottom—which crumble at a touch, and which resemble castles, churches, towers, domes, minarets, whole towns of every variety of architecture, suggested an artist's dream of a world to be; while others maintained that they were the images, in the mind of a philosopher, dwelling upon the past. There was no limit to the tricks which fancy might play in such surroundings, a nearer fata morgana; a dream materialised as it created itself; a poem precipitated as it was sung: castles in Spain in which each of us saw some reminder of his personal aspirations: the land of By-and-by; the ruins of Yesterday; the house of Never, according to our individual temperament and faculty.

Riding was not very rapid during the first hour and more, so that it was nearly seven o'clock when we reached the Jordan bridge—the Rubicon between Palestine and Moab, an exceedingly rickety wooden structure, of which the only effective part is the door at either end, designed for the enforcement of backsheesh. The river is embowered in trees, a variety of willow known as the safsaf, various acacias, the farnesiana, not yet filling the air with its delicious scent, the tortilis, and seyal—with the {23} long spines, which are found even on many plants innocent as lambs elsewhere, but fully armed in this land of thorns and thistles—the zakkum, resembling a large box-tree, also provided with strong thorns, the inevitable jujube zizyphus, the crimson-flowered oleander, which is as seldom out of blossom as is the gorse on our English moors, above all, the Jordan tamarisk, inseparable in one's memory from this river and its surroundings, green, graceful, and, in comparison with its many-armed and aggressive neighbours, gentle and friendly.

We had plenty of leisure to observe these details, for our arrangements with the guardians of the bridge involved not only inquiry, discussion, and the gratification of considerable curiosity but also consumption of coffee and distribution of backsheesh. The scene about us was animated and full of variety. The bridge may not be crossed before sunrise, and our arrival was timely, for types of the whole desert population seemed to have just arrived, and were pausing to reorganise their caravans. A group of fellahin, the agricultural labourers of the country, were bargaining with the Bedu, whose lands they are employed to cultivate at a wage of one-third of the profits, for the Bedu toil {24} not neither do they spin. They are the sons of the desert, freedom is their birthright, and the fellah, compared with them, is as the "linnet born within the cage" to one who has always "known the summer woods." With his scanty white robe, his black head-cloth or keffeeye, his huge akal of camels' hair, he is probably not less ragged than the blue-robed fellah, but he has an air of indescribable dignity. Utterly independent of his surroundings, he is as unaffected by hunger or the absence of all the necessaries of life, as a Highland chief, and, like him, is proud not of the mere outside conditions of life but, literally, of the blood in his veins. "I suppose you are descended from Abraham?" someone remarked to an old Bedawin of this district.

"Oh no; Abraham was not at all of good family," he replied.

The Circassians, too, are there, with wide-skirted coats and astrachan caps; the Turcomans, with flashes of scarlet and yellow where Arabs would be wearing white or blue—to say nothing of certain Government officials, savouring of town life, in tarbush and European boots.

Various animals of the desert are there: camels that are graceful and asses that are intelligent; horses with the manes and tails {25} which Nature intended for them; stallions of the fellahin and mares of the Bedu; oxen and goats and sheep and, as link with the wilder creatures, the pariah dog and the feral cat. There is a whole armoury of weapons, mostly of the kind adapted for a provincial museum, from a matchlock to a modern breech-loader, from a two-edged dagger to a cavalry sabre, from a horn-handled kitchen knife to the dainty instrument with which, with some futility, one of the party is manicuring his nails.

We begin to realise that we have said goodbye not only to roads, and sheets and tablecloths, but almost to humanity, for it seems as if the entire population were leaving the country towards which our faces are set. There is shouting in half-a-dozen languages—our own little party habitually provides five—there is the utter disorder combined with the perfect courtesy, which contrasts so strongly with the general order and personal indifference, of what we of the West suppose to be a higher civilisation.

The Lady showed her sense of the new order of things by betaking herself to a second stirrup; for, when you have to hang on to precipices by your eyelids, climb pathless mountains in the dark, descend over solid rock, slippery and {26} defenceless, or over shale which disappears beneath your horse's feet; when you may expect to be ten, twelve, or even fourteen hours a day in the saddle—and such a saddle as one is likely to obtain in the East—a Hyde Park seat does not afford all the security and convenience which anxious friends can desire. There was not enough leather in our outfit to go round, and as that second stirrup hung on by a piece of string it afforded an excellent measure of temperature, distance, and individual mood. "When in doubt" upon any question—if someone were desperate for a halt, when the party became scattered and consequent waiting provided a few odd minutes of spare time, when conversation failed or anyone were aching for occupation, if any member of the party had a sudden access of politeness and wished to exhibit interest or pay a little attention to the suddenly-remembered female sex—there was always that second stirrup to fall back upon. In the morning the string had lengthened with the night-dews, but as the day went on and each cavalier had added an attentive knot, the rider would allege that she had become as lopsided as a London milkwoman. By-and-by the knots tautened, the perpetual pull of a {27} thousand feet of ascent or descent, as the case might be, strained the string to its utmost, and the stirrup became inaccessible; after dusk she was suspected of dispensing with it altogether. The whole position was an excellent illustration of the misfit of the privileges claimed as "women's rights!" Nevertheless, it said something for the worth of the compromise, that she never once dismounted on account of the nature of the ground, that she brought home her animal with sound knees, that both horse and rider came back as fresh as they started, and that the company were loud in declaring that their patience was unexhausted and that they were ready, if any shred survived, to begin operations again upon that string to-morrow.

The Professor and the Lady had both changed horses; he for one which, however much elated by his position, could yet be induced to behave discreetly in the neighbourhood of the Bedawi mare; she for one which, although incapable of the much-vaunted rahwan, could nevertheless be kept within such bounds as befitted ascent of pathless precipices, and progress over the dry beds of mountain streams. It was probably owing to the superior lightness of the burden he had to carry that her new steed, Sadowi, a {28} light-limbed grey, was, like his predecessor, generally ahead of all the party. The Professor's long-legged mount and the active wide-flanked slender-headed mare of the officer, were of course the official leaders of the expedition, and the Lady did her utmost to sustain a modest retirement into the background. But her task was not easy, not only because of the personal ambitions of Sadowi, but on account of certain human vices on the part of the Professor's horse, for which the usual cherchez la femme was the occasion. The Bedawy beauty, with whom he carried on an active flirtation, was, on Oriental principles, haram (forbidden) to anyone else, and he refused to tolerate the neighbourhood of any other horse, looking round perpetually with an evil expression of suspicion and hatred, worthy only of his human superiors. When Sadowi passed him he turned aside to bite him in the act; when the Lady succeeded in keeping in the rear he kicked out at irregular intervals, on the chance of the proximity of his rival.

The coffee served to us pending our arrangements at the Jordan bridge was more than welcome, for we had almost forgotten our half-past-three-o'clock breakfast, and the feast of the {29} eye ceased, after a time, to suffice the appetite. Some of us had built our hopes on private stores of chocolate; but chocolate, in the East, even in October, has its drawback, from a tendency to trickle out of the corners of one's pockets in tell-tale streams which are not appetising. The humble peppermint, of the quality stamped "Extra Strong," reminiscent of the smell of afternoon church in the country, may rather be recommended, as allaying both hunger and thirst, the latter probably by stimulus of the salivary gland. Meat lozenges and other devices of the amateur traveller share the fate of the chocolate; bread becomes rusk and, like biscuit, is provocative of thirst; raisins, except of the kind which at home we dedicate to puddings, are, strange to say, unknown; and figs and dates with no water to wash them in, are—here where we know their antecedents—for most of us out of the question. One of our mukaris went about with a necklace of figs threaded on a string, from which he subtracted as occasion suggested. He had learned the art of the simplification of life: he drank almost anything that was wet, ate as has been described, never, so far as was known, undressed, and slept anywhere except, apparently, in a bed, but for choice {30} on the top of one of the baggage animals whenever the road in any degree approached the horizontal. His only luxury was his water-pipe, which he produced at every moment of leisure, trusting to his companion to keep it alight without any unnecessary expenditure of tombak, the special tobacco used for the narghile, whenever duty called him away. He was to such a degree a man of resource and expedient that a story which the Professor told us, though, as a matter of fact, observed elsewhere, might just as well have been applied to him. Some mukari in the Professor's employ had also a water-pipe, but seems to have been fastidious, which Khalil was not, and on one occasion was seen looking around for something which might be conveniently inserted into the bottle-shaped vase which holds the water, and in which a ring of scum had formed upon the glass. His eye fell upon a neighbouring donkey. He seized the beast's tail, twisted it into a convenient bottle brush, performed the required ablution, and returned it to the astonished owner, who, however, with the usual intelligence of the Palestine ass, made no remark upon the subject.

In Syria the greatest difficulty in locomotion, {31} except backsheesh, for which it is the pretext, is quarantine. It is easy enough to cross the Jordan bridge eastward on payment of a toll of three piasters (about 7d.), for man and beast, but it may not be so easy to get back again, as quarantine may be imposed at any hour, and may last for any length of time. It was necessary, therefore, to make it clear to the official mind that, by special favour, we were to be allowed to return without let or hindrance, whatever might have occurred in the interval. That, in the name of Allah, would be as Allah and certain exalted persons willed, we were piously assured, and finally, with much hand-shaking and invocation—May peace go with you! May your path be broad! May your day be blessed!—the gates were opened, and in a few minutes we were east of the River Jordan, which in the rainy season is at least one hundred feet wide, but was now only one-third of that distance.

A plain some four or five hours broad—for here all measurement is by time, at the rate of three or four miles an hour, according to the nature of the country—lay between us and the foot of the hills, although during all the months we had looked longingly at them from the hills of Jud?a they had seemed to rise almost {32} perpendicularly from the banks of the Jordan and of the Dead Sea.

Our destination before nightfall was Madaba, which lies 2940 feet above sea level. Starting from the valley of the Dead Sea, 1292 feet below the Mediterranean, and with the wide plain of the Jordan valley to cross before the ascent could begin, it was evident we must reserve our force for the precipitous climb of over 4000 feet which awaited us, and we accordingly kept our horses in check, although the sandy plain offered temptation for a canter. We had abundance of interest. The Sportsmen hardly expected to meet with the lions which formerly infested the thickets of the Jordan, but traces of wild boar might be looked for, also hy?nas, jackals, and foxes (which it is considered legitimate to shoot) both the desert fox, canis niloticus, and the canis variegatus, smaller than the English fox, with a grey back, black breast, and a large bushy tail. Cheetahs are occasionally found in the district we were approaching, the wild cat, felis caligata, though rare, is not unknown, of gazelles we should doubtless see plenty in the mountains, the ibex, with huge horns, might be expected among the rocks of the highest points; and the sight of {33} a wolf was not wholly impossible. However, the immediate expectation, considering the hour, the place, and the sounds which accompanied our cavalcade—for nothing short of personal danger can silence an Arab—was rather of bird than of beast. The first prize in the mind of the Sportsmen was the francolin, much valued in Syria as a pot-shot. It is something between a pheasant and a partridge, of dark grey plumage, very strong both to run and fly, and with a powerful call. Partridges, too, came within their ambitions, and the partridge of Syria is indeed game worth the powder. Down here, in the plains, the Hey's partridge, ammoperdix heyi, with its delicate plumage, a soft grey touched with richest blue, is the most common; but as we advance the larger Greek partridge, the caccabis saxatilis, awaits us, among the rocks and boulders of the mountain passes. Pigeons and sand-grouse, and the large Indian turtle-dove, turtur risorius, were abundant, but the wedge-tailed raven, corvus affinis, with his whistling cry and jackdaw-like air of gaiety, did not show until we reached the cliffs of a higher district.

The Lady openly exulted in the lack of accessible game, and grudged even the occasional {34} shots fired, as disturbing to the smaller creatures in which she found delight—the grakle, the blackbird with orange under wings with whom we had already made friends by the brook Cherith, whose bell-like note sounded from tree to tree, the dainty sun-bird, cinnyris ose?, whose metallic sheen flashed in and out of the tamarisk-trees, the delicate—hued Moabite sparrow, the aristocrat of his family, who ran up reeds and tree trunks like the familiar tits at home. We were too early to see the flights of birds of passage on their way south to warmer climes, and which, before and after the winter months, pause in the thickets of the Jordan basin, and fill the air with music, which includes the notes of the cuckoo and the nightingale, and recalls, however irrelevantly, Browning's "Oh, to be in England, now that April's here!" We had hoped to see the busy little jerboa, a jumping mouse with long hind legs, like a microscopic kangaroo, but circumstances were, for the present, against us, chiefly the noise of our cavalcade. He is a friendly little beast, and easily tamed, and though familiar with him in confinement we should have liked to see him under happier conditions.

We could not have happened on a more {35} unfortunate season for flowers; the wonderful flora of the Jordan valley was now at rest, and even the autumn squills, the delicate muscari, and a few lingering silenae had been left behind on the higher ground the other side of Jericho. The only feast of colour was the oleander, familiar to most of us as a greenhouse shrub, and which here rose with its rich crimson or pure white flowers, single or double, wherever a little water remained to keep the earth moist about its roots. We speculated as to what might be its nearest cousin in our northern latitudes, and the wildest guesses were made, including the rhododendron, mezereum, daphne, and syringa, but no one thought of the familiar periwinkle, with its shining trails and sapphire blooms, in habit and appearance so utterly dissimilar, but which also belongs to the family of apocynacea, or dog-bane. In spite of its rich colouring and welcome beauty, the oleander bush is highly poisonous, affecting even the water in which it grows. A story is told of some French soldiers in the Peninsular War who utilised some of its twigs to serve as spits for roasting meat, with the result that seven out of twelve who ate of it shortly died.

We knew better than to expect to find "Jericho {36} roses" in the Jericho district, although this curious and interesting crucifer anastatica exists in considerable quantities about Masada, towards Engedi, some twenty hours south. It is an annual, and its curious blossoms are formed in the spring. We found, however, many specimens of the Dead Sea fruit, though still green and unripe. It is an asclepiad, calotropis procera, called by the Arabs oshr, and is strictly subtropical. The fruit, the "apple of Sodom" of Josephus, has an inflated, leathery skin, which, when crushed, leaves in the hand only fibres and bits of rind. The stalk has a strong milky juice. The name is also given to the solanum sanctum, of the family of the potato, which also resembles an apple, and is red, with black seeds.

Tristram has happily described the high lands above the Jordan valley as a "watershed ... the fruitful mother of many infant wadys," a wady being a river bed, and as we made our way along the Wady Heshban, almost due east, turning southward later in the day, we had glimpses of many of these glens, and we even forded a couple of streams on their way down to the Jordan before, towards noon, we found ourselves at the foot of the mountains. A clear running stream, a little grove of trees, were a {37} temptation not to be resisted. In a moment we were off our horses, although, unfortunately, not in time to prevent the baggage animals—left for an instant by the mukaris, who hastened to receive our weary steeds—from refreshing themselves in their own fashion, by a roll in the cool water, oblivious of their encumbrances, or, possibly, possessed of some vague notion of debarrassing themselves of a superfluity. They had been travelling between seven and eight hours, and for the last two in intense heat, not only overhead but, from radiation of the light sandy soil, underfoot. We could not feel angry with them, and all cheerfully helped the Lady to hang her entire wardrobe and personal belongings upon the projecting branches of the jujube-trees, useful for once, as it was her saddle-bags which had suffered most, although a supply of cake, gingerbread, and chocolate was reduced to a condition uneatable by any but the mukaris, who considered the incident an acceptable dispensation of Providence, or, in their own phrase, maktoub—"it is decreed."

A few Bedu under the farther trees were the first human beings we had met since leaving Jericho except some camel-drivers who, silent and statuesque, their flocks of many scores {38} of stately camels equally silent and pictorial, had seemed rather to be a part of the landscape than to have any human relation with ourselves. One of the group came forward, and greeted us in such fluent German that we at first took him for some agricultural speculator buying seed or seeking labourers from among the fellahin; for the agriculture—that is the organised, not to say scientific, agriculture of Palestine—is practically in the hands of Germans and Jews. However, he turned out to be a native, educated at one of the many German schools of Jerusalem, or elsewhere, at one time an employé of the Austrian post office, on his way, alone, with a dagger and a revolver for sole companions, to visit some property at Madaba. On hearing that this was our destination he begged permission to join our cavalcade, which the Professor readily granted, as the remaining journey, among the mountains, was especially solitary. We were very grateful for coffee and an excellent lunch of sausage, potted meat, and jam, with white bread, brought from Jerusalem, the last European bread we were likely to see. We ate our dainties with some sense of guilt, and a shamefaced sensation of geographical and historical anachronism, as the Professor, without waiting for {39} our feast to be unpacked and spread, produced from some secret recess three parcels, one of which was laid aside for the moment, though with a promissory glance at the Lady, which she knew denoted instruction in view. The other two proved to be bags, one containing dates, the other figs, "Dates and figs," we were informed, "were the natural food of desert wanderers, sufficing to the body, stimulating to the mind; the wheat, the flesh, above all the alcohol, of civilisation, were mere irrelevancies." Here some of us sought to conceal our sandwiches and withdraw our anticipations from private flasks. "Was it not diet such as this," and he waved a pair of sensitive hands over his ascetic larder, "which had enabled him to reply to the inquiry of a Personage as to how many hours a day he could ride in the desert—'Twenty-four, your Majesty, since the day does not contain twenty-five, and a man will endure anything for the sake of his miserable life'? For was it not on a diet of figs and dates that he had ridden sixty hours without dismounting, resting only for two hours, when he dropped out of the saddle, just one hour's ride from friends and safety? Was it your meat-eater, your wine-drinker, who remained sound and {40} wholesome when necessity obliged him to refrain from ablution for twenty-one days? 'If a man must be a pig or die of thirst, your Majesty,' he had submitted to the Personage in question, 'will he not rather be a pig?' a sentiment with which even royalty heartily concurred." At this point he carefully counted his date stones, observed that two more were yet due to his appetite, and, having finished his frugal luncheon, drew from the saddle-bag deposited beside him his native pipe, some eighteen inches long, of which the clay head and wooden stem were carefully and separately wrapped in paper, filled it with strong tobacco, and lighted it with a mysterious paper match, laid atop, which smouldered for a perceptible time, and set fire to the precious fuel. Someone, anxious, perhaps, for the just distribution of human praise and blame, unwisely murmured that "tobacco was a luxury." The Professor withdrew his pipe to describe the less costly "smokes" of desert life. The paths across the desert of Central Arabia have been the same, probably, since the earliest ages. Man, camel-mounted, with the same dress, food, purpose, habits, has crossed those golden sands for ?ons as, and where, he crosses them now. The living of to-day are treading the dust of yesterday, {41} and amid that dust we may look not only for bleached bones and hypophosphates, but even for the decomposed dust of camel droppings. These, dried and purified, it may be, by centuries, are the substitute for tobacco of desert life. The Professor would not acknowledge any ability to give a personal opinion of its quality, but the Sportsmen, adventurous in this as in all else, were suspected later, when we reached the camel district, of making a personal experiment in the interests of science, with what results it was never revealed.

The Professor emptied his pipe, and, calling the attention of the Lady, opened his third parcel, which proved to contain a large square of white net. "Such a treasure as this," he admonished her, "you would do well to acquire. It is a luxury of travel. When I wish for repose I envelop myself. It averts flies and mosquitoes, and is a hint to my companions that I do not desire conversation." So saying, he modestly withdrew into its folds, and only a neat little pair of black boots emerging from—apparently—a bridal veil, remained to indicate his personality.

The rest of us drew our keffeeyes before our eyes, laid our heads upon any sloping substance {42} that offered itself, and neither man nor beast needed further inducement to enter into the land of dreams.

At two o'clock we were again in the saddle, conscious of between 3000 and 4000 feet to climb. Our faces were set eastward, but we knew that we had to reach a point above and beyond Mount Nebo, which lay immediately south, "to climb where Moses stood, and view the landscape o'er." Very soon the shrubs, which had hitherto been at least our occasional companions, were left behind, and, perpetually climbing, we began to realise that we had entered a new world. The limestone, dolomite, and gravel limestone of Jud?a had largely given place to a formation different alike in colour and outline—mainly red sand-stone, often of very fantastic features, and a certain amount of basalt—later, as we came still farther south, masses of green-stone and boulders of pudding-stone. The green-stone is embedded in and streaked with a deep olive grey, but in places is as green as malachite. Tristram points out that a dip in the strata brings the limestone again in places to the surface, which probably accounts for the varied colouring of the cliffs—black, red, and white—which, in the clear, brilliant {43} sunshine, is dazzling in its effect. The great tableland of Moab lies about 4000 feet above the Dead Sea valley, and slopes gently eastward for some twenty-five miles, beyond which rises another range of hills (limestone), the watershed of Moab, and the frontier of Arabia, whose blue distances we afterwards came to feel as a new limitation, which we longed to cross, as formerly we had longed to cross the hills of Moab.

For miles we saw no sign of human life, no cultivation, no domestic animal, only wide stretches of bare rock and a scant vegetation, which seemed, although so burnt as to be difficult to distinguish, mainly sandwort and soapwort. Now and then a flash of shadow showed that a lizard had darted away, but even small birds were rare. When the wide zigzag, which always seemed to turn horizontally just as we had begun to make advance, allowed us, from time to time, to cast glimpses westward at the mountains of Jud?a, we were much astonished at their height and grandeur. A prophet has no honour in his own country, and we had no conception that the familiar range would have so much dignity from afar. Finally, we reached a tableland, a wide terrace, before arriving at {44} the foot of the farther range of mountains, which we must still pass.

We halted beneath a solitary tree, and were thankful for the contents of our water-bottles. Glass bottles cased with straw and packed in saddle-bags were almost hot enough to make tea from, whereas the German military flasks of the Sportsmen, with felt coverings damped before starting, and hooked to the saddle, provided a deliciously cool drink. Mount Nebo, which had all day dominated the landscape southwards to our right, had much dwindled in importance, and indeed the end of our journey would bring us to an elevation 600 feet its superior; and there are indeed many points from which Moses might have had a much finer panorama of the promised land than that conventionally pointed out.

Very soon we begin to climb the farther and final range, and to enter into a district in which the human interest again awoke, not the less strongly that it was connected with a past which, in England, we should consider remote, but which we describe here as "merely Roman"—that is to say, not quite two thousand years ago. The Roman road, which we followed for some distance, is in much better condition than, for {45} example, the road between Jerusalem and Jaffa, or Jerusalem and Bethlehem, in spite of the heavy road tax which, theoretically, keeps them in order, and the milestones, though prostrate, are still of imperial dignity—massive columns some six or eight feet in height.

Other columns and great hewn stones are scattered here and there by the roadside, telling of a grandeur that is past, of a civilisation with which we have nothing to compare. Another chapter in human history had been recently suggested by a great dolmen, worthy of Stonehenge; some of us longed to turn aside to examine it more closely, as it was the first we had seen in this country, although they are very abundant east of Jordan, especially in the district lying between Heshbon and the hot springs of Callirhoe.

An almost perpendicular climb, which the heavier among the party thought it only merciful to accomplish on foot, brought us to the summit of the farther range, the Tell el Mataba, marked by an extensive stone circle, from whence we practically looked down on Mount Nebo, and soon found ourselves in entirely changed surroundings. Here and there signs of cultivation, a couple of fellahin carrying a plough, a donkey {46} bearing a sack of grain and driven by women, all spoke of the neighbourhood of human habitation. A great plateau gently sloping upward to the east, the fertile Ard 'Abdallah, lay open before us, and we knew that beyond the gentle slopes lay the city of Madaba, of which, at present, there was no indication, except that of the industry of its inhabitants—or at least the industry which its neighbourhood made possible. On a slight eminence stood the tomb of 'Abdallah, of whom we could learn only that he was a great shech, as was testified by the symbols displayed upon his tombstone: a mortar for preparing, an iron spoon for roasting, a pot for boiling, and a cup for drinking, the coffee, which was the symbol of his unlimited hospitality.

Thoughts crowded into our minds with rapid confusion. We had seen too much; disentanglement was difficult. The stone circle, the dolmen burial monument of some primeval race, may have been looked upon by Moses in those sad, closing hours of a disappointed life—by Balaam and Balak wandering from point to point, from one high place of Baal to another, among these hills, seeking for some spot whence the prophet might feel himself inspired to curse the tents of Israel, who had made such havoc up yonder in {47} Heshbon, and along the very wady we had crossed. We remembered how the cities of Moab were described by Ezekiel as "the glory of the country," and yet how her inhabitants were warned by Jeremiah "to flee and get away, for the cities thereof shall be desolate." We saw, in fancy, the Roman soldiers of the tenth legion, the military colonies, the Gr?co-Roman culture, the Christian, the Persian influence; finally, in strange rivalry with powers so strong, so highly developed, the Arab, who for thirteen hundred years has lived among the ruins of the past, not, on the whole, actively destructive but living only for each day's need; initiating nothing, saving nothing from decay, not even seeking to preserve a tree or repair a cistern, and whose finest monument, among all these ruins of the past, is that of a shech who dispensed much coffee! He has held the country longer than anyone else, as the eagle his eyrie or the wolf his lair, and as we advanced each day farther and farther into the desolation of the present, more and more closely in touch with the traces of the grandeur of the past, we felt that here, at least, was a race perfectly adapted to the environment it had, in great degree, created for itself.

{48} Our tired horses, conscious of twelve hours of work already past, were thankful for level ground, and took fresh heart as we pursued a fairly good path, between wide expanses of fields, in which the harvest was not yet entirely over; that wonderful Syrian harvest, which seems to be going on continuously, here or there, during quite half the year, from May to October. We, also weary, let the reins fall loose and wandered on thus meditating, the Professor and our officer to the front, the mukaris bringing up the rear. Suddenly we were conscious of a slight shock to our body corporate, and, looking up, perceived that the Professor and the officer were in colloquy with a body of some six or eight wild-looking Arabs, their swarthy countenances looking the darker and more savage for their black keffeeyes and akals.

At this moment our Sportsmen rode up, one of whom spoke Arabic like a native, and the Professor, waving a dignified negative, rode ahead. We joined him, and turning our horses looked back at the scene in progress. The leader of the attacking party was in hot argument with the Sportsman, who responded to his shouts and gestures with the cool imperturbability which, of all European characteristics, {49} is most surprising to the Arab, while our mukaris, hastily collecting the baggage animals, and casting an anxious glance ahead at the horses we were riding, hovered timorously in the rear. As a mere accidental coincidence we observed that another of the band had fallen upon an unlucky fellah, who rode up at the moment, knocked him off his donkey, and was beating him—casually as it appeared—but probably pour encourager les autres—namely, our mukaris. They demanded, as we afterwards learnt, a tax upon every horse in our company before permitting us to enter the town of Madaba, which they represented. "If you belong to Madaba then accompany us to Madaba, where we will pay any tax which appears to be just," replied our Sportsman calmly, "but it seems to me you are highwaymen," and so saying he, with our other Sportsman, our second mukari with two baggage animals, and our German-speaking Arab companion, rode on, and joined our distant group, Khalil, our chief mukari, who was held responsible for all the horses, being retained as hostage. With the usual cowardice of an Arab, in spite of the Sportsman's assurances that he would "see him through," he very foolishly produced his purse, {50} satisfied their demands, and rode on triumphant. The chatter that ensued among our three Arab companions—for nothing in the world excites an Arab like a question of money—can only be compared to a rookery at sunset. One had a rare opportunity of appreciating the alleged variety of the Arabic vocabulary; its adaptation to utterances of anger, vituperation, and regret. "They claimed, they got, fifty-nine piasters" was the burden of the song, and we had it in solo, antiphon, chorus, refrain, with a hundred variations, all the rest of the way to Madaba. On our arrival we found that our brigands belonged to Es-Salt, a town eight hours N.E. of Jericho (Madaba being a good ten hours S.E.), and entirely unconnected with this district; that the tax which they claimed was a war tax, just now enforced by the Government upon every man in his own town, so that our poor Khalil would have to pay it over again on his return to Jerusalem. With this fact, however, we did not at present acquaint him.