Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/128

104 Country, or Negeb, and the Wilderness. The Hill Country has always been fertile, and was once very well watered. The South Country used to be well populated and watered as shown by the numerous cisterns. But the Wilderness was never cultivated except in patches. 'Ain Shems is the last spring till we get to Jericho. The torrent beds are not often flooded, but when they are the inundation is tremendous. The Canon has encamped in a dry wady, but at midnight has been forced to flee from the sudden flood. He saw then the difficulty of measuring geologic forces by time, as a single flood may carry away much land. Much of the imagery of the Psalms is furnished by David's wanderings from the Wady Kelt to 'Ain Jidy. "A dry and thirsty land where no water is," "Turn our Captivity as the torrents of the South," are phrases easily understood here. The Canon has seen the wild boar driven up here after the Jordan floods, as the lions were driven up from the "swellings of Jordan" in old times. The last lions in Palestine were killed on Carmel at the time of the Crusaders, but the bear and the leopard are still to be found in the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon. The features of this part of the country have not changed from Bible times.

Khans are as unchangeable as roads, and we may well believe that this is the spot referred to by our Lord in the parable of the Good Samaritan. There were always cisterns here; here, for once, we are on no apochryphal site. Partridges abound, and David speaks of being chased "as a partridge in the wilderness." John the Baptist roamed all over this wilderness, perhaps preached here at this very Khan. Locusts and wild honey would be his natural food. The Arabs still catch locusts here; when fried and eaten with salt they taste like marrow. The hives of the wild bee, Apis lagustri, yellower than our bee, are found here in the caves. In the autumn the land is so bare that the bees eat their own honey. The honey is prized by the Arabs, who catch a bee, gum a tiny fragment of feather to his abdomen, let him go, and follow him to his hidden hive. Not far away is the Frank Mountain, where a castle was built by Herod as a last impregnable refuge in case he was driven from his kingdom. He may lie buried there in a tomb at the bottom of a pond.

On arriving at Jericho we found that a magic town had sprung up in the night: a huge circle was formed by about forty white tents, with great dining tents in the middle; the camp at Jericho being under the personal management of Mr. Alexander Howard. The general arrangements in Palestine were made by Messrs. Thomas Cook and Son. After dinner Mr. Bliss gave an informal lecture on the Lebanon. The next morning the party rode off to the Jordan and the Dead Sea, while Canon Tristram and I took a quiet day for exploration. It was difficult to realise that thirteen years had gone by since his last visit to Palestine: every bird, every plant were as familiar to him as if he had seen them the day before. In the cuts made by the Fund at Tell Abu 'Aleik and the Tell at 'Ain es Sultan, I was pleased to recognise several distinct varieties of the pre-Israelitish or Amorite pottery, so familiar to me in the lower