IN THE HOLY
LAND
CHAPTER VIII.
Down at the Dead Sea.
Report of robberies—Increase of
escort—Awkward squad—Going down to Jericho—The thorny
crown—Scene of the great parable [Luke x. 30]—Oriental
brigands—Wildness of the scenery—Brook Cherith [i Kings xvii.
6]—Place of the temptation— Quarantana—Old Jericho—fountain
of Elisha [2 Kings ii. 19-22]—Historic memories [Joshua vi.; 2 Kings ii.
2, 3, 15]—Later Jericho [Mark x. 46; Luke xix. 5]— New
Jericho—Marks of earlier fertility—The Jericho theatre—A modern
village —Tropical climate— The Jordan—High mass—An incident
that is a discord—Look of the river—A protest—Full stream
[Joshua iii. 14-17; Ps. cxiv. 5; Matt. Hi. 13-17] —The Dead Sea—First
impressions—Flight of wild ducks—Reign of desolation—
Problems—Lieutenant Lynch—Engedi—The Essenes—Off to
MarSaba—Birds in the wilderness—With the monks and the
birds—History of the convent—Suggestions—Convent-bell at
midnight—Biblical illustrations [Gen. xxiv. zg, 20].
OUR last excursion from Jerusalem was by the Jericho road
to the Jordan and the Dead Sea. As our intention was to make a considerable
circuit, so as to return by the Convent of Mar Saba, this journey was certain
to occupy the greater part of three days. On the evening before we set off, the
tidings were reported to us in our little hotel, with much gravity, that a
party had been attacked on the line of our route near to the Jordan, only two
days before. We found, on inquiry, that while there was some truth in the
report, there was a good deal of exaggeration in the details; and all that we
did was to increase the number of our Bedouin escort; for while by this time we
had got accustomed to false alarms, we well knew that the road over which we
were about to travel was the most dangerous in Palestine - at least on the
western side of the Jordan. Our guard, when it appeared the next morning, was
of a somewhat ragged description; most innocent of soap or of pipe-clay; each
man carrying a long musket, whose barrel was strengthened by a number of brass
rings fixed round it, reminding one of a broken limb that had been carefully
bandaged; and the chief carrying the additional distinction of a sabre dangling
at his side, and two enormous pistols stuck in his belt, with handles like the
heads of little bull-dogs. Winding rapidly round the southern point of Olivet,
and turning eastward past Bethany, of which we obtained a parting glimpse, we
began our descent towards Jericho. The evangelical writers are strictly true to
the facts of geography - as they are indeed in every other instance - when they
speak of "going down" from Jerusalem to Jericho; for you descend quickly all
the way, the plain of the Jordan in which old Jericho stood being three
thousand feet below the mountain-level of Jerusalem. On the earlier part of our
journey, we were greatly interested by repeatedly coming on a shrub or bush
having tangled branches with sharp spikes more than an inch long. It is
traditionally named as the species of bush from which our Lord's thorny crown
was woven; and it has been not inaccurately represented in some of the pictures
of the Old Masters. Certainly, when such a cruel garland was fastened around
the temples, and still more when the head was stricken, the wounds must have
been deep, and the suffering great.
As we advanced, the signs of
vegetation became scantier, and the road more wild, intricate, and difficult.
We now became impressed with what has so often been noticed - the exquisite
propriety with which this path had been chosen by our Lord as the scene of his
great parable of the good Samaritan. "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to
Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded
him, and departed, leaving him half dead." There were twenty places on our way
where we could imagine the scene to have been enacted, as it has often indeed
been repeated in its darker features since Christ's days. Jerome mentions one
place as familiarly known in his times by the name of the red or bloody road.
Again and again, we passed on a narrow path between high, black, frowning rocks
coming upon sharp angles beyond which a band of robbers completely hidden might
have been waiting with pointed muzzles to give us a bloody welcome, or to
receive us into a snare from which there would be no escape. It would be
difficult to imagine a mountain pass even in Calabria more suitable for Italian
brigands than this Jericho road is for the Oriental robber. At one sharp narrow
turn, we came upon a company of Arabs, with their spears in rest and their
matchlocks in their hands, who glared upon us with their fierce covetous eyes;
but they did us no harm. We were not unwilling, however, by a more rapid pace,
to put a mile or two between us and such thievish-looking characters,
especially as they might happen to change their mind.
At length, we got
out from those rocky zigzag paths, and moved cautiously along the sides of high
mountains, from which we looked down into wadys of almost terrific depth. The
heat was great; the soil chalky; everything baked and withered; channels that
had not long since been the bed of mountain streams, had become so dry that we
might have lain down and slept in them with safety. One of these wadys was so
deep, and the part of the mountain below us so precipitous, that it was
sometimes dizzying to look downwards, and one false step would have been
certain destruction. We noticed, however, that while there was not so much
moisture as a drop of dew on the sides of the mountain, there was a brook of
considerable volume and breadth flowing at the bottom of the valley, thickly
covered in many places with oleander-bushes, which grew on either side of it,
but in other places open and clear, moving on with a steady current of some
force. What rivulet was this! Its modern name is Krith; and the more we
thought, the more we were inclined to concur in the judgment of many travellers
of authority, that this was the actual brook Cherith, on whose banks the
prophet Elijah was sent to hide himself from the vengeance of Ahab during the
first period of the three years of famine. Looking at the various natural
conditions of the scene, it was impossible to imagine any place more
wonderfully fitted to be the refuge of that fearless "prophet of fire." We
remarked this to our friend who was riding near us. The place itself was almost
inaccessible. The brook continued to flow on, as if secretly fed by some
inexhaustible fountain, when everything around for many miles looked as if it
had come out of an oven. Those thickly-tangled oleander-bushes would not only
supply a most grateful shade, but many a dark covert in which Elijah might
elude discovery. Only one condition seemed wanting to fill up the narrative in
the Second Book of Kings. As we said this, a number of ravens rose from the
very spot, and sailed up past us into the sky. "There," we exclaimed, " are the
great-grandchildren by thousands of generations of the ravens that were
Elijah's miraculous purveyors!" " For the ravens brought him bread and flesh in
the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the
brook."
When we had ridden for more than four hours, we came upon a
region of extraordinary solitariness and desolation, the place among the
mountains of Judea which an old and highly probable tradition has fixed upon as
the scene of our Lord's first temptation. It is not merely what Milton has
pictured it, -
"A barren desert, fountainless and dry,"
but like a
place to be shunned; a spot on which the very dews of heaven would refuse to
fall - confused, blasted, judgment-stricken. Maundrell long since truly
described it as " so torn and disordered as if the earth had here suffered some
great convulsion, in which its very bowels had been turned outward."
Dim
mists hung over it, like some unwholesome exhalation. Hither came that
"glorious Eremite," led of the Spirit, that he might fast for forty days, and
at the end of that season "be tempted of the devil." It was the chosen
battle-ground of single combat between the author of our ruin and Him who had
come to be the author of our redemption. "Alone he fasted, and alone he fought"
Satan conquered the first Adam in a garden; he was now to be conquered by the
second Adam in a desert; and by this, and the greater victory upon Calvary, the
garden was to be recovered and re-entered - something immeasurably better than
the paradise that had been lost was to be regained. Is it presumptuous to say
that all external things in that momentous conflict were in favour of the
tempter? The exhausted body of our Redeemer, the long solitude which had cut
him off from all human sympathy, the depressing influence of the scenery; even
the presence of the wild beasts, one would think, must have added to the
horrors of the scene. But there was no opening for Satan's darts in that
sinless spirit. " The Prince of this world came, and had nothing in
him."
It was a positive relief to turn away from this weird-like spot,
and, soon after, to look down upon the broad plain of Jericho on which the sun
was shining - to trace the verdant line of the Jordan now so near - to gaze on
the molten mirror of the Dead Sea at a greater distance - and to mark the play
of purple light upon the distant hills of Arabia and Southern Palestine.
Passing down by a comparatively easy descent, we were soon out upon the plain,
and gazing back towards the rugged mountain-land over which we had been
travelling. There, straight before us, was the mountain of Quarantana, by which
the range is terminated - white, tugged, and naked, rising sheer up from the
plain to a height of fifteen hundred feet It is far from unlikely that it is
the "exceeding high mountain" which was the scene of our Lord's second
temptation, according to Luke's order, from which the baffled adversary, next
seeking to awaken in his pure bosom the fires of unholy ambition, "showed him
in a moment of time the kingdoms of the world and all the glory thereof,"
"By what strange parallax, or optic skill
Of vision multiplied through
air, or glass
Of telescope, were fruitless to inquire."
There are
cells and caves all up the sides of the mountain, in which some of the more
devout Coptic and Abyssinian Christians continue to keep their Quarantain, or
forty days of fasting, before going up to keep Easter at
Jerusalem.
Bounding eastward over the plain, another mile brought us to
the fountain of Elisha and the ruins of old Jericho. There seems no reason for
doubting that this is the actual fountain which was miraculously healed of its
unwholesome qualities and its brackishness, at tha request of the people of
Jericho, by the prophet Elisha. It is a noble well to this day, gurgling forth
at once with broad, bright, vigorous stream. An old traveller of two centuries
ago describes it as flowing into a large reservoir or basin, an immense
palm-tree bending over the brimming lakelet, and himself and a party of forty
taking theirafternoon meal on the margin under the palm's grateful shade. There
is nothing of this amenity now, for the energy of the Bedouins always goes
forth in the direction of destruction; but its waters are refreshing - the
sweetest, it is said, in Palestine - and so abundant that our wearied horses
plunged at once into the middle of them above their knees.
And if this
was the memorable Elisha-fountain, then around us, in those pillars of
broken-down aqueducts - in those fragments of pottery and hewn stones cropping
up through the soil - above all, in those immense pyramidal mounds of debris -
we beheld the ruins of the ancient Jericho of Joshua's times, "huge city and
high-towered." With some difficulty we climbed through the midst of the loose
debris to the ridge of the mound, and sought to call up some of the historic
pictures associated with Old Jericho. A mile or two eastward, between us and
the Jordan, must have been the temporary resting-place of the children of
Israel after their miraculous passage of the sacred stream. Around the lofty
walled city which had stood on this spot, the chosen men of Israel had made
their daily circuit - the priests, bearing the mysterious ark, moving in front
of them; andxm the seventh day, at the shout of the people and the sound of the
trumpets, the strong ramparts had fallen flat to the ground, and God had put
into their hands the glorious first-fruits of Canaanitish conquest. Nor was it
possible for us to forget, as we looked up along the valley that stretched
northward to Bethel, that down that very way Elijah must have come with his
loving minister Elisha on that eventful day when he was to be taken up; the
young prophets from their college at Jericho following him at some distance,
and, from a vantage-ground not far off, beholding his sudden heavenward ascent
in the chariot of fire.
The Jericho of our Lord's times - where blind
Bartimeus and his companion received their sight, and where Zaccheus, little of
stature, climbed up into the low-branched sycamore to escape the pressure of
the eager crowd, and to have a better view of the meek Prophet as he passed
beneath - lay nearer to the mountain, and can still be traced by those tokens
of man's labour and residence which so unequivocally mark the site of the
perisried cities of the East.
Our servants had, some time before, left
us for Riha, or New Jericho, a mile and a half southward, in the neighbourhood
of which they were to pitch our tents and have everything in readiness for us.
We followed in the line of the sparkling .streamlet which flowed from the
fountain of Elisha, and gave life and beauty to a somewhat broad margin of
trees on either side of it. The Ain Duk - another fountain, from which a second
rivulet poured itself - and a stream issuing from the Wady Kelt, also marked
their course by similar strips of green; and there were little cultivated spots
and pleasant knots of trees visible at wide intervals: but, in its general
aspect, this plain of Jericho was bare and desolate. And yet this same region,
stretching from the shores of the Dead Sea away up to Bethel, and from the
Jordan to the mountains of Judah, had once been the very garden of Palestine.
The former culture of the sugar-cane is to this day revealed by the ruins of
old sugar-mills that are seen in many places, especially in the line of streams
and aqueducts. The vine and the fig-tree flourished here in their congenial
soil; corn and indigo abounded. Here the oposal-bum wept its tears of fragrant,
healing balsam, which was sold in Rome for twice its weight in silver; and
Jericho rejoiced through many centuries in its favourite name of " the City of
Palms." The luxurious Cleopatra coveted this region, and received it at length
from her enslaved lover, Mark Antony, as her splendid dowry. The last of the
Herods came here to die, and tried in vain to forget his misery in its
matchless beauty. And all this ancient glory and Eden-like abundance may yet
come back again. Irrigation from those little dancing rivulets - and, above
all, from the neighbouring Jordan, with its extraordinary water-power - along
with skilled industry and the protection of a truly paternal government, would
produce a speedy resurrection of all the earlier beauty and fruitfulness. When
once man is changed in Palestine, its soil will be renewed: "Upon the land of
my people will come up thorns and briers, until the Spirit be poured from on
high."
The silvery stars were shining down beautifully upon our tents
before we had dined, and we were resolving on an early rest for our wearied
bodies, when we were startled by visitors from the neighbouring Moslem village
of Riha, bearing rude lanterns and thick branches of trees, and looking most
debased and villanous. They were about eighteen in number, and we were a little
uneasy to learn in what this sudden apparition was to terminate. Arranging
themselves in a line, and closely wedged to each other at about twelve paces
distant from us, they moved to and fro, stamping with their feet and clapping
with their hands; to all which they kept time by wild monotonous sounds, which
gradually increased in loudness. By degrees they came nearer; at length so near
as to brandish the thick branches in our faces, and to yell in our ears with
cries the very opposite of musical. All this we endured without the least sign
of resistance or look of fear; for had we shown either of these, they would no
doubt have proceeded to more unpleasant liberties. At length the cry of
"bucksheesh" interpreted all these performances; and with the present of a few
coins, we thought we had rid ourselves rather cheaply of the filthy savages.
But they had scarcely gone when there appeared a similar company of women, who
went through the same exhibition, only with shriller cries and more horrible
grins. A second "bucksheesh" disposed of them also. But the two ungainly
companies had robbed us, in our extreme weariness, of a precious hour of rest.
We were not without apprehension that, after they had taken measure of our
apparent strength, visits of a worse form would disturb us during the night;
but through the watchfulness of our guards, or for some other reason, we were
left unmolested.
We rose early the next morning, and getting up to the
top of a mound, looked down upon the miserable village from which our swarthy
entertainers had come the night before. Its houses were about twenty-four in
number: they were built and roofed in with matted brushwood, stone, and clay,
and looked much more like pig-sties than human habitations. A thick hedge of
some dense prickly shrub formed their wall of defence. The inhabitants count as
Bedouins of the agricultural class, but are, in fact, prowling robbers, to whom
farming is a second resort. Their religion is a compound of Mohammedanism and
foul superstition: and it is affirmed that the vices of Sodom have clung for
four thousand years to the people of this region, just as the bitumen has never
been separated from its soil. Nothing, in fact, had a look of innocence in that
wretched place except the beautiful white doves which cooed upon its roofs and
flew constantly in and out of its dwellings.
Not far from this village
there were little plots of trees and corn-fields; and we had time to notice the
astonishing advance of vegetation in this region as compared with that around
Jerusalem. There the fig-tree had only begun to send forth its first tender
shoots; here it was covered with foliage. There we had left the corn little
more than in the blade on the slopes of Mount Zion; here, though it was only
the first day in April, it was the time of harvest, and some of the corn was
already reaped. In a ride of little more than five hours, or at a distance from
Jerusalem of fifteen miles, we had suddenly passed into the climate of the
tropics. This is the case in the southern extremity of the Jordan, and in the
deep Ghor through which it rushes to the Dead Sea. We recollect hearing an
eminent traveller mention that he found flowers growing in this part of
Palestine similar to those which abound in some of the hottest districts of
India, and that many of the birds were the same as those which he had met with
in the African Sahara. It is a unique fact in the physical geography of the
world, that, in a country of about an equal area with Wales, there exist all
the principal climates of the earth. Down towards the embouchure of the Jordan,
there are the temperature and the natural productions of the tropics; in
Samaria the climate is not unlike that of the south of England or the centre of
France; while north, upon the loftier sides of Lebanon, you meet with many of
the plants and animals of the frigid zone, and come upon the region of eternal
snow, realizing the poet's picture of " sainted Lebanon,"
"Whose head in
wintry grandeur towers,
And whitens with eternal sleet;
While summer,
in a vale of flowers,
Is sleeping rosy at his feet."
It is more than
a devout fancy which recognizes divine wisdom in selecting a country of such
varied scenery and climate as the centre of a revelation which was designed to
be universal; for it has thereby been secured that the pictures and poetical
allusions with which the Scriptures abound, shall be intelligible by the
universal world.
We had become impatient to reach the Jordan, which we
knew was little more than three miles distant from us eastward; and our
refreshed horses, seeming to share in our impatience, galloped quickly with us
over the plain, which was crisp with sand, or covered with samphire and other
minute plants. More than once we rose in our stirrups, hoping to catch the
first glance of an object that was like a sacred poem to our soul; but the
singularly deep depression of its channel, and the trees which thickly lined it
on either side, effectually hid it from us until we were almost on its margin.
But there it was at length - "the Jordan! the Jordan!" - rushing impetuously
onward like a war-horse to the Sea of Death. But as we were finding our way
from the higher level down through tangled shrubs and thick grass to the
river's brink, we were startled by a spectacle which, of all things in the
world, we had least expected to see. It was Monsignor Capel again. Beside a
clump of trees a wooden altar was erected, with six tall wax-candles burning
and guttering under a mid-day sun. A stout priest, constantly fanned by an
attendant, was performing what seemed high mass; the clever ecclesiastic was
kneeling at the distance of about a yard; and the Scottish marquis, bareheaded,
was also kneeling a good way further back. A little Arab boy, moved apparently
by pity, tore down a branch from a neighbouring tamarisk-tree, and began to fan
away the mosquitoes from the exposed head of the young peer. We turned away
with pity of another kind.
This part of the Jordan is the scene of the
annual immersions of pilgrims from all parts of the world, and. the traditional
spot where John the Baptist performed his baptisms. A considerable stretch of
the river is visible from one point; and the wild laurel, the arbutus, the
pistachio, the willow, the aspen, and the tamarisk, form a richly variegated
fringe to its banks and a most welcome protection from the sun's rays, which
without them, would be almost intolerable. We confess ourselves unable to join
with those who have recorded their first impresses of this sacred stream in
words of disappointment and strong depreciation. We afterwards came upon the
river at points in its upper course; and there, flowing with moderate current
and over a rocky bottom, it reminded us, even in its music, of one of our own
Scottish streams. We have seen a painter seize upon something much less
promising at home, and call it picturesque. But where we now stood, the river
was a hundred feet broad, and ten feet deep almost from its brink; and, rushing
and swirling on with irresistible speed, it gave us the impression of grandeur
and might. The last epithet we should have thought of applying to it was that
of "insignificant" One strong Arab, having stripped himself and bound an
inflated goat-skin round his loins, flung himself into the current In spite of
all his efforts, it floated him down wtth the speed of a cork. As he was by no
means an expert in steering his course, it was only through a bend in the river
with some overhanging branches, that he was saved from being carried away. No
doubt the Jordan was now in flood for it was the harvest season in its
neighbourhood, and true to its old custom as recorded in Old Testament story,
it still "overflows his banks all the time of harvest;" and though there are no
lions m Palestine now, it had driven by its swellings many a leopard and wild
boar from their lair among its reeds and willows The nearest trees still dipped
their lowest branches in its current, and we could trace the recent water-mark
some feet higher, so that we saw the river to advantage. But even with these
concessions, we can only account for the remarkable toning down of some
travellers, by supposing that they had visited the river at a much less
favourable season of the year, or that they had come with extravagantly excited
expectations.
But there were grand and holy memories connected with the
Jordan which, as we stood and silently gazed, seemed to shed a wondrous glory
over it. Not far from the place where we then were - for it was "over against
Jericho" - its waters had been miraculously divided, as the feet of the
white-robed priests bearing the ark touched its brink; and while the ark stood
in its middle channel, the triumphant hosts of Israel, more than a million
strong, had passed over on dry ground. "What ailed thee, O Jordan, that thou
wast driven back?" Many a century afterwards, at the touch of Elijah's mantle,
twice in one day it had separated its waters and made a path - first for the
heaven-summoned prophet, and next for his meek minister and successor. In some
quiet eddy hereabouts, John had baptized his thousands, having proclaimed to
them, as they sat in eagerly listening crowds in that Jericho plain beyond, the
coming of the King and his kingdom, and the necessity of repentance in order to
his meet reception. And in the same place, it is probable, there had met the
forerunner and the King, the representative of the old dispensation with the
Author and Head, of the new; and while John had poured on his head the
baptismal stream, the act of consecration had been immediately ratified by the
voice of the Father from the midst of " the excellent glory," and by the
visible descent upon him of the Holy Spirit without measure. That one event
will make the Jordan the chief of all rivers while the world
stands.
Through how many ages have the poetry and the prayers of
Christians made the passage of this river the favourite emblem of the
believer's death! Was it unnatural then, that, as we turned away from its
brink, our thoughts sought utterance in those words of the hymn -
"To
Jordan's banks whene'er we come,
And hear the swelling waters roar,
Jesus, convey us safely home
To friends not lost, but gone before."
We were soon mounted and on our way to the Dead Sea, which was more than an
hour and a half distant. For a time we kept near the course of the Jordan,
which, as we could observe through occasional openings in the bright green
foliage that skirted its banks, flowed around many a wooded islet, and looked
truly beautiful. At length we struck more in a southwesterly direction, and
passed through a region that became ever more and more bare and desolate as we
advanced. Blackened sand-hills, and vast mounds that might have been the tombs
of the giant sinners of Sodom, were our dismal landmarks. One has said that we
might imagine cities looking thus "in the subterranean kingdom of hell." At all
events, there was a kind of pictorial keeping in the fact that such a pathway
as this should have been our road to the Dead Sea.
Yet the first
impression produced on us, when we sat down on its northern shore and looked
along its surface, was not of that gloomy description which so many have
experienced. There it spread, like a smooth mirror, reflecting the radiance of
the bright sun above, which shone out from a cloudless sky that was beautifully
blue. We have seen lakes in Switzerland, and even nearer home, whose first
influence upon us was much more depressing. It is the facts and associations
connected with it, that do so much to spread a black pall over our spirit as we
keep gazing on it. In all that far-stretching inland sea - twice as long and
broad as our own Loch Lomond - there is not a single living thing. The old
fiction has indeed long since been disproved, that no bird can fly over it
without being poisoned by its sulphurous evaporations; and we ourselves saw
eighteen wild ducks accomplish the feat unharmed, and alight at the mouth of
the Jordan. But it is a fact that birds are almost never to be seen floating on
its waters, or feeding on its shores. You look in vain for the white-winged
sea-gull or the twittering swallows that follow the caiques on the bright
waters of the Bosphorus. No boat ever skims its surface; for why should the
fisherman drop his net into a sea that is without life? It is a kind of liquid
wilderness. Floral life is not entirely absent, for we plucked one of the most
beautiful flowers we saw in Palestine, about the distance of a yard outside the
water-mark ot the Dead Sea. But vegetable life is exceedingly rare, and the
mountains that hem in the lake like ramparts on either side, are barren,
igneous, and black, only capable of sustaining a few sickly plants; while the
reeds that grow at the mouth of the few streams that flow into it are encrusted
with salt, and look as if they were made of coral. All along its shores, as far
as the eye could reach, there was neither village, nor human habitation, nor
human being; for the Arab keeps at a distance from its sickly shores, even more
than he would from a ghost-haunted ruin or a spot that was accursed. Then the
traveller is unable to rid himself of the thought that those sullen waters
float over the graves of the guilty cities that were miraculously destroyed
because of their moral abominations, and that the very region has the wrath of
God against sin visibly ploughed into it and written on it. The contrast was
indeed great between this and the Sea of Galilee, on whose shores it was
afterwards our delight to linger, bright and joyous with life, and almost every
association connected with which was rich in lessons of purity, or in memories
of the miracles of Christ's love.
The various problems that have so long
hung over this mysterious sea, seem now to be approaching solution. Where was
the site of the four cities of the plain ? And, keeping in view the information
supplied by the sacred narrative, what was the manner of their destruction? All
modern investigations converge to the conclusion that the cities stood on a
portion of land beyond the well-known ford which is now the south-eastern
extremity of the lake, and which is comparatively shallow. They were built on
soil that was bituminous, and therefore igneous; the stones themselves were of
the same material, obtained from the neighbouring slime-pits; a fiery shower of
sulphur mingled with lightning would be enough to set the whole circle of
cities in flames, and these burning down to the water's edge, the waters would
rush in and complete the desolation, and, as it were, do the work of burial
after death. Is it a mere conjecture that broken pillars are still visible
through the transparent waters when they are low, and that these are some parts
of the unconsumed skeletons of the reprobate cities.
We saw the Dead
Sea in its least unfavourable aspect, and the extreme gravity of its waters
makes it less liable to be tossed by storms than our common inland seas. But it
can be angry even to tempest, as the heaps of battered and blackened driftwood
near us made evident It was only a bound and sleeping demoniac after all. The
experience of Lieutenant Lynch, when it was black with gloom and shaken by a
hurricane, and from which his adventurous crew only escaped destruction as by a
hair's-breadth, might have served as a subject for the pencil of Gustave Dore,
or for a scene in the " Inferno" of Dante. There was one spot far down on the
western side of this melancholy sea, to which we felt ourselves almost
irresistibly drawn. This was the garden of Engedi, memorable in the records of
David's youthful heroism. Was that the beautiful oasis on which a stream of
light was now falling, as if it were carrying down to it some of heaven's
"selectest influences " It is a lofty plateau many hundred feet above the
neighbouring lake. A noble fountain gushes forth from it, and after spreading
verdure and beauty all around it, descends in a succession of cascades to the
salt sea so far beneath. For two centuries before the advent of our Redeemer,
and for some ages after, it had been the quiet retreat of the Essenes, the
purest and most benignant sect of Eastern ascetics and mystics that had ever
withdrawn from, the world. While chargeable with the common mistakes of all
recluses, - that of making light of the divine institution of the family, and
with confounding isolation from their race with separation from evil - these
men were neither idle nor selfish. Clothed in white garments, the emblem of
that inward sanctity which they sought, these amiable anchorites mingled
meditation and worship with earnest work. They cultivated gardens, extracted
healing simples from the herbs that grew around them, sought to acquire skill
in surgery, promoted health in their community by strict attention to the
maxims of temperance and cleanliness, and sent little colonies out from their
society to practise the healing art, not only into the neighbouring regions,
but as far westward as the banks of the Nile. Were not these some of the
children of the dawn, who were waiting to welcome the fully risen Sun. One is
curious to know whether they ever held intercourse with Christ, or with his
great forerunner dwelling in the desert not far off, whose meat was locusts and
wild honey? The gospel histories are silent on this question. But Church
history informs us that, before the second century, this interesting people
found all their vague longings satisfied in the communion of Christian
believers.
We were to spend the evening of this long day at the
Monastery of Mar Saba, which was some hours distant, and it was more than time
to turn away from the sad, silent shore. The way was even more steep and
dangerous than that of our morning ride, while the heat of the sickly region
took all energy out of us. It seemed almost an undue hazarding of life to ride
far up along the steep sides of a mountain with roads that scarcely supplied a.
foothold for the antelope, and from which you looked down into a gorge that was
dark at noonday from its narrowness and depth. Ugly black lizards and slimy
centipedes basked in the rays of that sun of fire. At length we got into the
line of the Kidron, from which we knew that we were on the right course to the
convent which was to be our welcome goal for the night. Looking down upon the
rocky sides of the almost dried-up brook, we could see many a cave and grotto
which, in former days, had been the retreat of stern recluses, and in earlier
centuries, the last refuge of the persecuted saints of God. As we kept
picturing to our minds those old histories of a heroism of which heaven holds
the records, we were refreshed, at a sudden turn of the road, by a sight of the
lofty gray towers of Mar Saba, rising in those rocky wilds like a lighthouse in
an angry sea.
While we were visiting the convent, our little encampment,
with the British ensign floating from our middle tent, was being prepared for
us.
Descending by many steps, we knocked at the ponderous outer gate, and
were answered, not by an immediate opening, but by a cowled monk looking out
upon us from a loophole in the wall a good way above our heads, and demanding
our authorization, which we had happily brought with us from Jerusalem. Then
the gate was slowly and cautiously opened, having locks and bars that would
have been large and strong enough for the castle of Giant Despair. In fact, the
whole establishment had quite as much the look of a fortress as of a sacred
house; the reason being that its great wealth is a powerful temptation to the
lawless Bedouins around; and the law is rigid against admitting either a
Mohammedan or a woman within its gates. We were conducted down winding stairs
and along narrow corridors, and then led forth to the ledge of a rock fenced by
a strong balustrade, which looked out into the terrific gorge of the Kidron far
beneath. Then we began to have some notion of the form of this extraordinary
structure. Down and down many a fathom the convent stretched, built upon and
among the rocky declivities; and when we looked up, the sight was the same -
building and cliff intermingling, so that it was often impossible to determine
which was the natural rock and which the work of man, all terminating in yon
giddy eminence from which a monk was looking out into the far-off world. Here
and there, were passages along the precipitous sides of the rock duly fenced
outward, which led to little solitary cells that seemed much more fitted for
penance than for prayer.
This monastery belongs to the Greek Church, and
is the oldest in Palestine, having been founded late in the fifth century by
St. Sabas of Cappadocia, a man greatly reputed for his miracles and his
sanctity, and for doing good battle with the heresies of his times, - though
sometimes, it is to be feared, with rather carnal weapons. It is rich in
manuscripts, and richer in treasures which the covetous imaginations of the
neighbouring mountain Arabs have wildly exaggerated; while it enjoys the unique
honour of having the first portion of the holy fire sent to it, after it has
been received from heaven by the Greek patriarch in the Holy Sepulchre at
Jerusalem! If old traditions are to be credited, this Mar Saba, clinging to its
rocks in the Judean desert, must have attracted to it, in some ages, sacred
persons enough to have made the wilderness complain of over-population. At
present, the inmates of the convent do not exceed fifty. The monks with whom we
conversed were sickly in appearance, and had voices like those of eunuchs. They
regarded the somewhat tawdry ornaments of their chapel, and the piled heaps of
martyrs' skulls, with much of the puerile vanity with which children look on
their tinsel toys. It was evident that they dozed and trifled away much of
their time in whittling branches of trees into staves with fantastic heads, and
polishing into beads asphalt stones from the Dead Sea, which they sold at
exorbitant prices. We liked better their friendship with the birds, which they
were able, by a familiar whistle, to bring up from the neighbouring gorge. One
beautiful creature, as large as a thrush, with black plumage and yellow wings,
perched on the fingers of one of the monks and fed there. But, altogether, this
extraordinary place seemed to us to be a tremendous anachronism. Might not
those fifty able-bodied ecclesiastics have done something to effect a
friendship with the Bedouins as well as with the birds, and to give them at
least the elements of knowledge? It is said that there are 30,000 Ishmaelites,
dwellers in tents, from Syria to the banks of the Nile, who are utterly
ignorant, and truly "wild men."
Our last experience of Mar Saba,
however, was a pleasant one. As we lay awake in our tent far beyond midnight,
unable to sleep from the too great excitement of the previous day, the bell of
the convent rung through the wilderness with such a sweet, solemn, heavenly
sound as raised our thoughts upward, and brought to our recollection those
lines of Herbert: -
" Sweetest of sweets, I thank you ; when displeasure
Did through my body wound my mind.
You took me thence, and in your
house of pleasure
A dainty lodging me assigned."
Our journey to
Jerusalem next morning, along the Kidron Valley, had little about it of
adventure. But we met with some things that added to our stores of Biblical
illustration. Atone point, we came upon a large village of nomad Bedouins,
dwelling in their black tents. For the first time, we encountered a shepherd
playing on his reeden pipe and followed by his flock. He was leading them to a
fountain from which a maiden was, meanwhile, drawing water with a rope, and
pouring it into a large stone trough. She was not quite so beautiful as
Rebecca. In the afternoon of the same day, we bade a last farewell to
Jerusalem,
Go To Chapter Twelve
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