tents which they pitch wherever they find pasturage, and strike when it is ate up. They live mainly upon milk; the fleeces and camel skins furnish shelter and raiment, and plunder does the rest as to meat. Such has been the life of these savages from the day when the son of the bond-wo

man was cast out; and even this life of theirs seems now as formerly not to be without its blessing from the God of Abraham. "As for Ishmael, I have heard thee; behold I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; and I will make him a great nation." (Gen. xvii. 20.)

In this way did Abdallah and his brother push on their way before me, showing off their prowess, firing their muskets, and raising their spears, their gabble, mirth, and music, without ceasing for one minute. I admired their horses, which are still much the same as they were in the days of the Patriarchs. Both the men and horses before me were born and reared in the same apartment; they live, feed, and sleep together; they are travelling companions everywhere. Throughout the whole day the Arab is seated on its back; when food is needed he subsists entirely on the milk of his mare. During the insufferable heat at noon, where there is no vine or fig-tree to shelter from the sun, the Arab rests in the shade of his horse's body; and when sleeping at night he makes its side his cushion; and the pawing of this same faithful friend awakes him at the dawn of the morn. A secret language of natural signs exists between the Arab and his steed, and they convey their mind to each other like a father and son. The language seems to be their own, as none but themselves understand it. I noticed how gently the master treated his fleet servant without whip or spur, or

bridle-bit, but by a pressure of the knee, or a touch on the neck with his hand. Speak to one of these Arabs of his wife, his family, and his horse; silent in regard to all but the latter, he boasts of its docility, symmetry, and swiftness. All this is national, hereditary, and unchanged since the days when Job maintained his integrity.

The song of these Arabs to me was any thing but pleasant. Their melody is melancholy, and a sad minor runs through the whole tune, which is a low long-drawn mournful wail as if the cry of the jackall had been set to music. The whole song which they constantly sing is the painful sounds of despairing chromatic anguish. In fact I did not hear one note of music in the whole land of Palestine, while every one of the natives was singing around with nasal and twanging sounds not only monotonous but really provoking. "Truly," I thought, "all the merryhearted do sigh, and gladness is taken away. The sound of the tabret and harp, of the sackbut and psaltery, of the lute and the viol, are heard no more in the land." The only instrument I noticed was the Rebabeh, which discoursed music most melancholy; but nothing better could be expected from its sighing solitary string. The camels have bells about their necks, and some of them about their legs, like those which our carriers put about their fore-horses' necks. The tinkling of these is pleasant, and during the whole night the drivers continue to sing to make the journey pass delightfully in their own way. Hence we read that the Israelites, on their return to Jerusalem, came with singing unto Zion.

Language cannot better describe the road from Jerusalem to Jericho than the writings of Ezekiel and Jeremiah. These tell us that the mountains of Israel shall be desolate.

"For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the habitations of the wilderness a lamentation, because they are burnt up, so that none can pass through them; neither can men hear the voice of the cattle: both the fowl of the heavens and the beast are fled; they are gone." During the whole morning I wended my way down rugged rocks and over tracts scarcely passable, and hemmed in behind and before and on both sides by solemn desolation in the grandest scale. The silence all around was still as the grave. For twenty miles I did not see a bird, or a beast, or even an insect. Our cavalcade monopolized the whole life of the district, and was the only moving anomaly of the There was nothing to awaken the deep solitude but the noise of the horses' feet, and the musicless, monotonous chaunt of Ishmael's song, which never ceased. The Saracen poet says, that "song is like the dews of heaven on the bosom of the desert; it cools the path of the traveller." The scluff scluff of the animals' feet on the sand, and the plash plash of the water-jars on the back of our beasts of burden, were therefore varied by the song of the wild Bedouin beguiling the weary way.

scene.

The bridle-way leads along the course of the brook Kedron, through one terrific chasm after another, in every one of which there was presented the face of terror. There was nothing but abrupt rocks, deep ravines, and yawning caverns without water or life even for a summer fly. These caves have in all ages been a refuge for outlawed banditti; and as hiding-places they are frequently alluded to in Scripture. "Because of the Midianites the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains, and caves, and strong holds!" It was in one of these near by at En-gedi

240

EXCESSIVE HEAT AND FATIGUE.

that David and his six hundred men hid themselves when he cut off the skirt of Saul's robe.

When the sun passed the meridian its fierceness was overpowering. The rocks were of white limestone, and they reflected the excessive heat from every side. All that I had suffered from heat at Grand Cairo, in the Desert, or on the promontory of Sinai, when Fahrenheit's thermometer reached 109 degrees in the shade, seemed to be inferior to what I had to endure on this occasion. A turban

was round my head, and cloths were on the crown of my straw hat, and an umbrella was held above all, but still the heat overpowered me. The tendency to drowsiness amounting almost to stupor was irresistible, and I felt myself sometimes fast asleep on the saddle, or sick even to faintness, or feverish, and afraid even of madness. I was taken down, and laid to rest whenever we came to the shadow of a great rock in this weary land. And thus with a little ease, and a drink of water, I became again determined in spirit, and kept moving, knowing to a certainty that I would be robbed or perhaps murdered if I fell behind my protectors. Poor Warburton tells us that a traveller in similar circumstances, who fell behind when going down to Jericho, was robbed, stripped naked, and left with nothing but his hat. The district is mainly occupied by a fierce predatory tribe, called the Beni Sakhers, who contend with all the Arabs around, and harass the pilgrims going down to Jericho.

As I approached the plains of the Jordan, the road seeks a lower level through what is called the wilderness of the temptation and fast of forty days, where Satan was permitted to assail the Son of man. It attains a deep depression, as

VALE OF GILGAL-THE DENS OF WILD BEASTS. 241

certained by the Ordinance Survey under Lieutenant Symond, to be 1,312 feet below the level of the Mediterranean. Towards Jericho every mountain became familiar to the recollection the moment it was named, and every plain was full of meaning to the heart. Among the hills there was not a breath of wind, and when we descended towards the plain I expected that some slight breezes would spread on the river, and over the wide expanse. In this I was mistaken. I crossed a level tract. Over the Jordan, and on to the mountains of Moab, up and down the valley of the Dead Sea and its tributary streams, the prospect was equally unpromising. As far as the eye could reach, not one leaf or blade of withered grass seemed to stir. Everywhere was brown rock, or burnt foliage, or bitumen, salt, and lava. Passing Jericho a little in the distance, I traversed the saltcrusted vale of Gilgal, first over small sand hills and past little thickets of brushwood, and through dry water courses, and by winding lines of tamarisk, all the while through an atmosphere beaming under a bright sun, with a close suffocating heat, almost intolerable to man or beast. At last I entered the jungles by the banks of the Jordan, the dens of serpents and of wild beasts, our path being entangled in. underwood of thorns. Men and mules were equally worn out. Still I felt sick, and often did I expect to find the river, but as often was I disappointed. The Dead Sea immediately to the right of us presented a dull blue expanse to the sun, and I noticed the sand beds where the river seemed to join it. Before me there were other rows of sand hills such as I had already often passed, and mud banks dried in the sun, and another dry channel beyond, but still no Jordan was there. I passed one bank of verdure afte

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