Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/328

 Retracing our steps, we mounted again, and turned northward to the Fords of the Jordan. As we could not keep along the liver bank because of the dense jungle, we struck directly across the plain. The thick growth of reeds and rushes hides the river, but as we could see where it was flowing, it was easy to form a general idea of its character. The Jordan is born among the hills, having its source at the base of Hermon, from which it bursts forth like the streams that issue from the glaciers of the Alps, with all the fury of a mountain torrent. This character it preserves throughout its course, darting on swiftly like "the arrowy Rhone." Its rapid current gives it a force which is sometimes very destructive, but for all that it can hardly boast of the majesty of our broader but more slow-moving rivers. I am afraid that our colored brethren, who sing with such fervor

 "I want to go to heaven when I die, To hear old Jordan roll,"

would be a little disappointed were they to see "old Jordan," and find that it did not roll — for it has nothing of the peculiar swell and movement and sound of waves — but it rushes, if that will do. It rises so rapidly when the rains come or the snows melt on the sides of Hermon, that it sweeps everything before it, so that there is a peculiar aptness in the question of Jeremiah: "If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? And if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they have wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?"

After an hour's ride across the plain, we came to a more open space, where the jungle on the river side parted so as to allow us to come down to the brink, and we found ourselves at the spot which is generally held to be the scene of our Saviour's baptism. Whether the tradition is founded