A minor industry, the manufacture of rosaries, has originated in the abundance of certain kinds of hard wood.
The situation of Es-Salt is 2740 feet above sea-level; but the town itself lies in so deep a gorge, the mountains rising like a perpendicular wall on either hand, that we asked the padre whether the place were healthy, and he pointed out that the town extended, in fact, along two valleys—the Wady Osha, and a narrower wady, much less airy, and consequently less sanitary, as had been proved again and again in times of epidemic, when cholera and influenza have lingered and recurred long after they had ceased in the town itself.
The water is good, and very abundant, the town spring being the finest we had seen in the country.
Es-Salt, the seat of a bishopric, was not important till the Crusades. A fine mausoleum, known as Sâra, is said to be of Christian origin; and there are the remains of a church, hewn in the rocks, with many scattered rock tombs. The castle dates only from the thirteenth century, when it was rebuilt after destruction by the Mongols of the ancient fortress, which may have withstood Saladdin.
We were quite sorry to take leave here of our silent Circassian, who had always shown himself kindly and capable, but it seemed that his duty ended at Es-Salt—and, indeed, his services were no longer requisite. We noticed several Europeans in the town, probably merchants bringing raisins for export, or possibly grapes—for we had had some for breakfast of very unusual quality, and what a gardener would call "well grown," which seldom happens in this country, where the vines are most often not raised from the ground, so that the under side of the bunch, though well ripened by the warm, dry earth, is flat, and not always well coloured.
Considering the amount of commerce with other places it seemed to us to show an almost insolent—perhaps it was only an ignorant—indifference on the part of the inhabitants that they should make no effort whatever to improve the approach to Es-Salt. We left the town by a track but little better than that by which we had approached it—a track which would have spoilt the business of any decent stone quarry. The immediate exit was over a series of ash-heaps and middens, across which the women were trailing their long skirts with entire composure. Next we mounted a steep ascent over polished rock or scattered shale, just as it happened, and then, after a short distance on level ground, we began a long and difficult descent into the deep gorge, which more or less we followed all the way to the plain, that of the Wady Shaib, now absolutely dry, but which must be in winter, judging from the nature of its bed, a rushing torrent, losing itself finally in the Jordan.
About an hour from Es-Salt we met a boy with a laden donkey, which we passed with some difficulty, and a little farther observed a spring of water and a khan. There was some question as to whether we should meet with any water in the only other spring upon our route; but it was obviously too early for luncheon, and we continued our way, passing on a hill, to our left, a wely dedicated to Shu'aib, diminutive of Shaib, the Arabic name (used in the Koran) for Jethro, who gives his name to the wady—why is not obvious.
About noon we reached the Ain Es-Shech, and our horses were not slow in discovering that water of a kind was to be had. There was, at all events, welcome shade from a magnificent, wide-spreading fig-tree, the branches of which, growing close to the side of the hill, were available as couches and resting-places for half of its height. We boiled the water again and again, and fished out all its most striking disadvantages, though some were, unfortunately, less obvious than the microbes during a recent cholera scare at Bethlehem, which were reported by those personally interested in the quarantine question to be "as large as a napoleon."