e
washing themselves in the principal one. Our Bedouins immediately
dismounted and followed their example, and after we had taken some
refreshment, we had the satisfaction of filling our water-jug from the
same sweet pool. After this, we left the San Saba road, and mounted the
height east of the valley. From that point, all signs of cultivation and
habitation disappeared. The mountains were grim, bare, and frightfully
rugged. The scanty grass, coaxed into life by the winter rains, was
already scorched out of all greenness; some bunches of wild sage,
gnaphalium, and other hardy aromatic herbs spotted the yellow soil, and in
sheltered places the scarlet poppies burned like coals of fire among the
rifts of the gray limestone rock. Our track kept along the higher ridges
and crests of the hills, between the glens and gorges which sank on either
hand to a dizzy depth below, and were so steep as to be almost
inaccessible. The region is so scarred, gashed and torn, that no work of
man's hand can save it from perpetual desolation. It is a wilderness more
hopeless than the Desert. If I were left alone in the midst of it, I
should lie down and await death, without thought or hope of rescue.

The character of the day was peculiarly suited to enhance the impression
of such scenery. Though there were no clouds, the sun was invisible: as
far as we could see, beyond the Jordan, and away southward to the
mountains of Moab and the cliffs of Engaddi, the whole country was covered
as with the smoke of a furnace; and the furious sirocco, that threatened
to topple us down the gulfs yawning on either hand, had no coolness on its
wings. The horses were sure-footed, but now and then a gust would come
that made them and us strain against it, to avoid being dashed against the
rock on one side, or hurled off the brink on the other. The atmosphere was
painfully oppressive, and by and by a dogged silence took possession of
our party. After passing a lofty peak which Francois called Djebel Nuttar,
the Mountain of Rain, we came to a large Moslem building, situated on a
bleak eminence, overlooking part of the valley of the Jordan. This is the
tomb called Nebbee Moussa by the Arabs, and believed by them to stand
upon the spot where Moses died. We halted at the gate, but no one came to
admit us, though my companion thought he saw a man's head at one of the
apertures in the wall. Arab tradition here is as much at fault as
Christian tradition in many other