Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/97

 itself quietly into basins—reaches a prison-house whence there is no escape for its waters but—upward to the skies! Within a less direct distance than is measured by the Thames from Oxford to the Nore, or by the Severn from Shrewsbury to the Estuary of the Bristol Channel, or by the Humber, or the Trent, or the Tweed, in their main breadths, the waters of the Jordan break themselves away from the arctic glaciers of Hermon, and within the compass of one degree of latitude give a tropical verdure to the plains of Jericho, where the summer's heat is more intense than anywhere else on earth—unless it be Aden. To conceive of these extraordinary facts aright, we should imagine a parallel instance, as if it were so that, in the midland counties—or between London and Litchfield—perpetual snow surrounded the one, while the valley of the Thames should be a forest of palm-trees, with an African climate!

When the traveller crosses the Ghor, and ascends the wall of the Eastern table-land, that illimitable desert spreads itself out before him in traversing which meditative minds indulge in thoughts that break away from earth, and converse with whatever is great and unchanging in an upper world. If we retrace our steps in returning from the Eastern desert, and recross the Jordan, travelling southward, we come upon that region of bladeless desolation which constitutes the wall of the Asphaltic Lake, on its western side; yet from this land of gloom a few hours' journey suffices to bring into contrast the