"Yet who would stop, or fear to advance,
Though home or shelter he had none,
With such a sky to lead him on?"
W. Wordsworth

Very few things in the East fulfil adequately the purposes for which they are intended, and we were not at all surprised when the soldier, who arrived punctually at six o'clock next morning, and who had many graces, and possibly all the virtues, appeared mounted on a horse utterly unfit for the fatiguing journey we contemplated. We accordingly despatched him back to the serai, with thanks and compliments, and a message to the effect that we should prefer a better article. These little matters consume a great deal of time, and a proportionate amount of bad language, and to economise the one, and avoid the other, we went for a walk. Our kindly companion, who had been for some years a dispenser in the Scottish hospital in Tiberias, seemed to think there would be no objection to a trespass into the grounds of the mudir's private house, and obligingly lent a {324} hand while we collected the antique busts which were dispersed about his garden, and arranged them on garden seats with a view to photography. It is not every day one comes across half-a-dozen perfect specimens of Greek art never photographed before; and so obliging an amateur of beauty as the mudir had proved himself, would assuredly have understood and pardoned our temptation had he been up, which (perhaps happily, as some element of doubt remained) he was not. We then walked somewhat farther, feasted our eyes once more upon all the pleasant things of Besan, classical and modern, and when on our return we still found the incompetent steed tied up at the entrance to our khan, we wandered off to the serai, and finally possessed ourselves of an alternative soldier, although with some suspicion that this time it was the man, and not the horse, who was incompetent.

Neither Khalil nor the Artist had a high opinion of the plan cherished by the Lady and the Doctor—one feared scarcity of barley for the horses, the other of the amenities of civilisation for herself. The Artist, however, could not speak Arabic, so if there were any collusion with the officer it could only have been on the part of Khalil. We had not, however, gone far from {325} Besan, only far enough to be beyond reach of appeal, when we were presented with a series of pictures of the impossibilities ahead. No one knew where the Meshalcha Bedu were at present encamped—the place where they would undoubtedly be found was quite beyond a day's journey; we had started too late (it was already eight o'clock) to venture on so great a risk; it was not certain how we should be received. The consequences to ourselves were painted in vivid colours, but all these observations had for us an interest that was merely psychological and linguistic, as exhibiting the way in which the Arab mind worked. The Arab imagination was not daunted, however, and the next shot told. The fords of the Jordan would be impassable—had we not seen how full the Jal?d was, had not the little stream we had even now crossed reached to the knees of the horses, had not all the streams been drinking away there up in the hills, where Allah had so lately sent us the blessing of rain? The Lady and the Doctor looked guiltily at each other. The one put confidence in Sadowi, the other in his own inches; but if they should find they had inveigled the Artist into floating down the Jordan with not so much as an insurance upon her kodak! The Lady, {326} somewhat disingenuously, began to enlarge upon the prospect of visiting Pella, in hope of extracting an expression of desire, which might be quotable in case of emergency; but her friend showed no enthusiasm for Greek cities, declined to endorse ravings over early Christian refugees, and asked if any other way were shorter. Khalil's honour was appealed to, as to the veracity of the soldier's allegations. He swore upon his beard, which he did not possess, and upon his eyes, of which only one was in working order, upon his head and his heart, that the thing was impossible.

What were we to do? Go meekly back to Besan, abandon all our prospects, our tent of many poles (we had been assured that we must not think of entering one with less than three, and that our dignity really required even more), our tattooed ladies with the trains of their dresses in front, our stately shech, who would undoubtedly kill a sheep and bake cakes for us, like the patriarchs did when they had guests—return to the banalities of Nabl?s, where children asked for backsheesh, and finally ride home along a commonplace highroad to Jerusalem?

"When the tale of bricks is doubled Moses comes," say the Arabs—and the soldier had {327} an idea. We were to descend the banks of the Jordan on the west side. We had been assured that no one ever did this, that the district was very wild, and even lawless, and that the few Bedu we might chance to meet were such as we should not care to house with. However, we had our soldier, who looked effective (at a distance), and was bristling with weapons, and it would be quite interesting to sleep in the desert, light a fire to keep off wild beasts, and take turns to mount guard, like a boys' story book. Apparently, however, it need not come to this. Somewhere in the wilderness was a serai, a little fortress or Government building, which existed for the accommodation of tax-collectors, and there we could, no doubt, find shelter. We were somewhat inclined to believe that the whole thing was "a put-up job," arranged before we left, and that our soldier's journey was being utilised for conveying despatches, or more, probably, messages, from the parent Government establishment in Besan. However, we could only submit; had we persisted, our leader was not so unintelligent as not to see that his prophecies were fulfilled, and we wheeled round, and turned off to the south-east, fairly content with our prospects after all.

{328} We had followed the west side of the Jordan from the Sea of Tiberias to Besan, and now we were to follow it down to its fall into the Dead Sea—65 miles in all. Our path lay in the deep valley between the hills of Gilead on the east and the hills of Samaria and Jud?a on the west—a valley which the Arabs very suitably call El-Ghor—i.e. The Rift. It varies in width from 6 or 7 miles in the district of Besan to about 3 for some 13 miles alongside the hills of Samaria, widening by slow degrees till near Jericho, when it stretches out into a plain, as at Besan. The river winds and twists deep down at the bottom, its course marked all the way by an exuberant fertility, often extending for some distance east and west, showing where tributary streams are hastening down from the watersheds above. We rode, for the most part, upon somewhat higher ground, on terraces of land at the foot, or on the side of, the hills, as the case might be, and were often able to look down into this deep hollow of vivid green, reminding us, in exaggerated form, as so much in this land is exaggerated, of a north country ghyll. To realise its depth one has to remember that it is deeper below the earth's surface than an average coal mine, that it is really an old sea-bottom, {329} and that the rapidity of the stream, falling at first 40 feet in a mile, accounts for the weird forms of washed-out mounds of earth, for the exposed tree roots, for the heaps of débris of all kinds. The name of the Jordan is not composed of the two names Jor and Dan, as the early pilgrims so ingeniously conjectured, but means, appropriately, the "downcomer."

For some distance, all around and below Besan, there are abundant signs of extreme fertility. In ancient times it was noted for corn, dates, balsam, flax, and sugar-cane. The edicts of Diocletian refer to its trade in linen, and Vespasian settled his troops in this district as one capable of bearing a large additional population. In the course of the morning we crossed over a score of streams, and many remains of aqueducts showed how, in old days, they had been turned to the utmost account for irrigation. When we had passed but a few miles beyond Besan, we lost all traces of human habitation, although not of human handiwork, for wide patches of well-cultivated land testified that, like the Israelites of old, the hill population only comes down to sow, guard, and reap its harvests. Indeed, for the greater part of the year the Ghor would be uninhabitable. Its {330} hothouse vegetation implies also a hothouse climate; its swamps are beautiful but malarious; its streams are valuable for irrigation but death-dealing to drink, impregnated with chlorides and sodium, and rank with decaying vegetable matter.

From time to time we came across small groups of Bedawy tents, mainly of a humble kind, although now and then a tent of three poles, with a lance planted at the doorway, testified to the presence of a shech. Within but a short distance we were certain to find large flocks of lambs, white and woolly, a rare sight to us, accustomed only to the goats capable of enduring the aridity of the Jerusalem district, and familiar with sheep only as household pets, sharing equally with the cat and the water-pipe. The problem which at first presented itself was: What had become of all the mothers? The answer was generally found a mile or so farther on, in some green spot, whither they had been driven for pasture, to be brought back later, to the safety of the camp, and the needs of their nurslings.

It seemed to us that we now and then climbed hills for the sake of descending them, and that more than once we went across country to return to the neighbourhood of the point from which {331} we started; but, after all, it is difficult to judge of distances with only distant mountains for landmarks, and one part of such a valley as the Ghor is very much like another. We were to lunch beside the Wady Malih, the first stream on this part of our journey suitable alike for horse and man, but the wady was long in coming. At intervals we inquired as to its whereabouts, and were always told it was ba'ad wahad saar—"after half-an-hour"—and after about four half-hours, when the horses were getting somewhat weary, and our eyes ached from the glare of the sand, we entered a narrow valley, a wonderful garden of loveliness. For some time we had seen no animal life except lizards, an occasional jerboa (a pretty little miniature kangaroo), and occasional birds of prey—ravens, eagles, and griffon-vultures—flying high in the heavens towards some horse or camel, dead or dying. Here, at the very entrance of the valley, we disturbed innumerable pairs of busy little chats, among the daintiest of the bird creation (saxicola libanotica); and, almost equally graceful as to outline, although of a reddish-brown colour, like a robin, the little desert larks, which chattered rather than sang, as they hovered over the tangle of bulrushes and sedge-grass.

{332} Now and then we saw a gorgeous kingfisher, blue as sapphires, turquoises—blue as the sky itself. A little later we should probably have found storks, "the father of legs" as the Arabs call them, who arrive in the early spring in immense numbers, and add to the general fairy-tale effect of this country. The stream was concealed by a thicket of verdure, bordered, on slightly higher ground, by oleanders and willows, above them a belt of white poplars and tamarisks; while the steep, sloping banks were clothed with the bushes of the graceful capers, just coming into leaf, rival, in Palestine, of our own wild rose; while everywhere chrysanthemums, ornithogalums, scented stocks, hawkweeds, and centaureas promised abundance of colour if we would but await their coming.

We clamoured for an immediate halt—where could we find so inviting a spot?—but our attendants turned a deaf ear, and pressed on, gradually mounting to higher ground, and leaving our beautiful, but probably malarious, swamp behind. We dismounted finally on a little knoll crowned with trees, the stream, now clear of foliage, and accessible for the horses, winding about its foot, and a gay little waterfall making music for us beyond. Here we lunched and {333} rested, and then we had an illustration, characteristic of this country, of the wild-beast habits of the Arab. We are well accustomed to the fact that real solitude is here, in an ordinary way, impossible. You may scan the horizon, and see no sign of humanity for miles, but within a few minutes a picturesque Arab is beside you, asking impudently for backsheesh, insinuating that the hour is propitious for the smoking of tobacco, or offering you water or milk, according to the degree of his association with the improving influences of European civilisation. In the desert the Arab is still a gentleman, and the little group which suddenly appeared within a few feet of us—though for a dozen miles at least we had not seen so much humanity as might be implied by the presence of a single goat—offered no incivility, although they were mainly women, and therefore, as a rule, inferior in courtesy to the men. They did not even stare unduly; in fact, not half so much as we did at them. It is a curious and invariable fact that here, Arabs spring out of the earth, like London boys at an accident.

We did not feel entire confidence in our cicerone, as such; and as it was already late we dared not linger, and by three o'clock we had {334} mounted our horses, forded the Malih, and, mounting the steep acclivity beyond, found ourselves on high ground, which is the watershed for the innumerable wadys which wander down to the sinuous Jordan on our left. Hence we could look back to the hoary head of the Jebel es-Shech, of Mount Hermon, and forward to the Jebel Osha in the Belka; while on the hither side a break in the hills showed where the river Jabbok, another old friend of our last ride, was working its winding way down to the Jordan. If we had but known it—such information being far from the thoughts and interests of our escort, even had they known it themselves—we ought to have turned aside some four hours later to see the caverns of Makhr?d, which are, so far as we can learn, valuable alike to the geologist, and to the student of natural history.

However, we kept on our way, on somewhat high ground, till we entered a fertile valley, tending gradually to the south-east, and which our escort saluted with joy as the Wady Faria, in which our quarters for the night were situ............