In a Syrian Saddle

by A. Goodrich-Freer

"And fade into the light of common day."

We knew, when we had lost sight of Jerash, that the romance of our journey was over, although we had still before us three days of the happiness of an open-air life, and of being face to face with Nature in her wilder utterances. We were bound for Es-Salt, across the fertile land of Gilead, and over some of the highest ground east of the Jordan; but we could not but feel that, having looked upon "the giant forms of empires on their way to ruin," all else must seem commonplace, so far, at least, as it was associated with humanity. The land had relapsed into the hands of a people perhaps even more rudimentary than that from which it had been wrested, or, so far as the city of Es-Salt was concerned, into the worse savagery of a veneer of Europeanism.

We were not sorry to have to retrace, for some two hours, our steps of last night, and so recover some of the impressions which we had lost in the gathering twilight. We halted, for a short time only, at the fords of Jabbok, after which we followed a steep path for about half-an-hour, and then began to descend into the Wady El-Mastaba, a desolate gorge, shadeless and hot, from whence we were glad to escape again into the open, passing a few huts, which constitute the village of Mastaba, which owes its existence to the spring Ain El-Mastaba. Again another gorge, the Wady Umm Rabi, also with its spring; and a third, and more important wady and spring, with its village of some thirty huts, Er-Rummâna, which yesterday we had seen only in the distance. It is inhabited almost entirely by Turcomans, who, as usual, betray their nationality by the scarlet and orange touches in their dress—an agreeable change from the perpetual blue of the Arab. These nomadic tribes are to the settled Turks as the Bedu to the fixed population of the Arabs. They are fair, of less pronounced features than their Semitic neighbours, and most numerous in the north of Syria. They are occupied partly in agriculture, but more especially in cattle and camel rearing. We passed some women at a spring, and their manners struck us as having something of Circassian moroseness.

Just beyond the village the horizon widened, and showed, away to the west, the distant Samaritan hills, half way between us and the Mediterranean.

Presently we came to the edge of the tableland, and saw far below us the fertile gorge of Wâdi Salîhi. Here, we had been assured, we should find a beautiful waterfall, 60 feet in height, and embowered in creepers—a phenomenon almost unknown in Palestine. We never saw that waterfall; and we had a secret theory, some of us, that "Someone had blundered," for we were, moreover, required to descend a precipice calculated to disturb the nerves of even such experienced travellers as we considered ourselves to be. Some traces of a passing donkey were the only argument which—about half way down—seemed to be in favour of a prospect of ever reaching the bottom, which, however, was in course of time safely achieved. We were much impressed by the agility of the baggage animals, which clumsily, rather than heavily, laden, and wisely abandoned by the mukaris, picked their way as skilfully and daintily as cats, although it would be difficult to say whether the loose shale that crumbled beneath one's feet, or the polished rock, which offered no foothold at all, was the more disconcerting.

Down in the valley we found abundant shade, and the bushes were fresh and green, but the water in the wady was so low and muddy that we were the more convinced that we had entirely missed all traces of the waterfall. The horses, after the recent excitement, were thankful to drink, and we gladly spread our luncheon and made some coffee. In missing our waterfall we had also missed an interesting cromlech, said to be 13 feet in diameter.

About seven hours after leaving Jerash we entered the Wady Er-Rumemin, where we forded a brook which serves to turn two or three mills, and waters the small plain into which the valley finally opens. Here we found the first traces of Christianity since leaving Madaba, always excepting the locanda at Ammân: an orderly village with a Latin and a Greek church, school, and presbytery, well-planted olive grounds and neatly-kept vegetable gardens. We were already late, and dared not stay to examine a group of ruins to the west of the Latin church, still less others which, we were told, lay at a little distance.

Leaving the village by the right bank of the wady, now called El-Hor, we climbed a steep hill, and found ourselves in a beautiful oak wood.

As over a score of varieties of oaks are found in Palestine they are somewhat difficult to distinguish, but some at least of these were of the species quercus ægilops, having acorns with scales, the cups of which may be familiarly described as looking like miniature pineapples. They are used in tanning, and, as they form quite an important article of commerce, the trees are treated with more respect than is usual among the destructive fellahin.

During the winter one meets, coming into Jerusalem, whole caravans laden with great roots of trees, dug up for sale by the peasants of the mountains, and from this, as well as from tradition, we may well suppose that whole districts have been denuded of their forests. We are told, however, by various authorities that woods as we know them, lofty, as well as thick with undergrowth, have never existed here, and that such wood as we were now passing through is of the normal type, the growth open and scattered, and the trees thick rather than high. The undergrowth seemed to consist largely of dwarf oak and terebinth, and as we progressed farther, and the wood became thicker, of pine and thorn.