ldren and go out to face death in
the desert. But he had come out here to carry to the Arab the story of
Jesus Christ, who Himself had died on a Cross outside this very city.
So he kissed his little boy "good-bye," wrenched himself away, climbed
on top of the load on one of the pack horses and rode out through the
gate into the unknown. He thought as his horses picked their way down
the road from Jerusalem toward Jericho of how Jesus Christ had been
put to death in this very land. Over his left shoulder he saw the
slopes of the Mount of Olives; down below across the ravine on his
right was the Garden of Gethsemane. In a short time he was passing
through Bethany where Mary and Martha lived. Down the steep winding
road amongst the rocks he went, and took a cup of cold water at the
inn of the Good Samaritan.
Then with the Wilderness of Desolation stretching its tawny tumbled
desert hills away to the left, he moved onward, down and down until
the road came out a thousand feet below sea-level among the huts and
sheepfolds of Jericho, where he slept that night.
With his face toward the dawn that came up over the hills of Moab in
the distance, he was off again over the plain with the Dead Sea on
his right, across the swiftly flowing Jordan, and climbing the ravines
that lead into the mountains of Gilead.
That night he stayed with a Circassian family in a little house of
only one room into which were crowded his two horses, a mule, two
donkeys, a yoke of oxen, some sheep and goats, a crowd of cocks and
hens, four small dirty children and their father and mother; and a
great multitude of fleas.
The mother fried him a supper of eggs with bread, and after it he
showed them something that they had never seen before. He took out of
his pack a copy of the New Testament translated into Arabic.[66] He
read bits out of it and talked to them about the Love of God.
Early next morning, his saddle-bag stuffed with a batch of loaves
which the woman had baked first thing in the morning specially for
him, he set out again.
How could a whole batch of loaves be stuffed in one saddle-bag? The
loaves are flat and circular like a pancake. The dough is spread on a
kind of cushion, the woman takes up the cushion with the dough on it,
pushes it through the opening and slaps the dough on the inner wall
of a big mud oven (out of doors) that has been heated with a fire
of twigs, and in a minute or two pushes the cushion in again and the
c
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