Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/325

Rh driven their flocks across the Jordan into the land of Bashan for pasturage.

On emerging from the gorge of the Kedron, we found the character of the country the same as yesterday; the same succession of ascents and descents, the same clambering over rugged hills, winding around heights, and descending steep declivities; till gradually we came down to the level of the Dead Sea.

The ride took us five hours, and was very fatiguing. In the early morning, while the air was fresh, it was exhilarating; but as the sun rose higher, striking full on the slopes of the hills and into the deep valleys, the heat became intense, so that by eleven o'clock we were glad to take refuge in a clump of bushes, where we could get a little shade and an hour's rest, after which we mounted again and rode on to the shore.

My first impression of the Dead Sea was one of surprise at its beauty. Its very name seemed to be equivalent to the Sea of Death. Indeed it had been supposed that its life began with death; that its existence dated from an act of destruction, when the Cities of the Plain were destroyed by fire from heaven; and naturally I thought of it as a dull, sluggish, almost stagnant, body of water, lying in a "plain," which was not a garden of fertility, but a sandy desert, with perhaps here and there scattered fragments upon the shore, the melancholy tokens of its utter desolation. This idea vanishes at the first glimpse caught from the side of the mountains. Instead of the black waters of Death, we looked down upon a deep blue expanse that had all the beauty of the Scotch or Swiss lakes. Its one unique feature is its extreme depression on the earth's surface, for it is the lowest body of water on the globe, lying thirteen hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean. But this rather