Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/196

160 denudation, and it again breaks out under the Khan el Ahmar, where the limestone beds are contorted and calcined.

As we were resting under the rocks near the Khan, a large party of Russian pilgrims, mounted on donkeys and ponies, arrived on their way to receive baptism from the Patriarch of the Greek Church in the sacred waters of the Jordan. They presented a strange spectacle—their pots and pans for cooking, their little stores of food and clothes fastened on the pommels of their saddles—all chattering briskly and pressing onwards to reach the hospitable roof of the Greek Convent (which stands in the midst of the Jordan Valley) before nightfall. We were pretty well mixed up with these pilgrims for the most part of our way, which did not tend to our own gratification, or facilitate observation on the natural phenomena around us. At length, towards evening, we found ourselves on the brink of the Wâdy Kelt, one of the deepest ravines in Palestine, generally considered to be "the Brook Cherith that is before Jordan," where Elijah was fed by the ravens. As Conder says, the whole gorge is wonderfully wild and romantic. It is bounded by vertical cliffs of limestone in nearly horizontal courses several hundred feet in depth, and hollowed into eaves, the abode in past times of Anchorites. The bottom of the gorge is lined with tall canes, and the water, which rises in a spring amongst the mountains, nearly four miles from the spot where it debouches on the plain of Jericho, is probably perennial, even during the longest droughts. Terrible, therefore, must have been the drought in the days of Ahab, "when the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land."

At a bend of the road near the mouth of the Kelt we found ourselves overlooking the plain of Jordan, The pilgrims gave a shout of joy as they beheld the object of their long and toilsome journey. A vast expanse of green and brownish tints stretched from our feet away to the distant hills of Moab; and in front, amongst the groves and gardens of Gilgal,