Adamah,
where an event once happened which was of great consequence to the
Israelites and which has often been misunderstood. They were encamped on
the east side, opposite Jericho, nearly thirty miles below this point,
waiting for their first opportunity to cross the Jordan. Then, says the
record, "the waters which came down from above stopped, and were piled
up in a heap, a great way off, at Adam, ... and the people passed over
right against Jericho." (Joshua iii: 14-16.)

Look at these great clay-banks overhanging the river, and you will
understand what it was that opened a dry path for Israel into Canaan.
One of these huge masses of clay was undermined, and slipped, and fell
across the river, heaping up the waters behind a temporary natural dam,
and cutting off the supply of the lower stream. It may have taken three
or four days for the river to carve its way through or around that
obstruction, and meantime any one could march across to Jericho without
wetting his feet. I have seen precisely the same thing happen on a
salmon river in Canada quite as large as the Jordan.

The river is more open at this place, and there is a curious
six-cornered ferry-boat, pulled to and fro with ropes by a half-dozen
bare-legged Arabs. If it had been a New England river, the practical
Western mind would have built a long boat with a flat board at each
side, and rigged a couple of running wheels on a single rope. Then the
ferryman would have had nothing to do but let the stern of his craft
swing down at an angle with the stream, and the swift current would have
pushed him from one side to the other at his will. But these Orientals
have been running their ferry in their own way, no doubt, for many
centuries; and who are we to break in upon their laborious indolence
with new ideas? It is enough that they bring us over safely, with our
cattle and our stuff, in several bands, with much tugging at the ropes
and shouting and singing.

We look in vain on the shore of the Jordan for a pleasant place to eat
our luncheon. The big trees stand with their feet in the river, and the
smaller shrubs are scraggly and spiny. At last we find a little patch of
shade on a steep bank above the yellow stream, and here we make
ourselves as comfortable as we can, with the thermometer at 110 deg., and
the hungry gnats and mosquitoes swarming around us.

Early in the afternoon we desperately resolve to brave the sun, and ride
up from the river-bed into the