Just where the Kelt falls into the Jordan there is a great bend westward, and an open shingly shore to the river. The opposite bank, some twenty yards off, is a flat expanse of mud, with a perpendicular marl-cliff above, some fifty feet high. North of this ford is a group of magnificent tamarisks, apparently of great antiquity; on the south the thick jungle again hides the stream.
From the Pilgrim’s Bathing-place we rode down by the beautiful blue pool of ’Ain Hajlah, and over the desolate expanse of grey, salt mud, to the mouth of Jordan, where a delta of soft marsh and vegetable debris is formed, and so along the open pebbly beach of the Dead Sea.
The scenery round the sea is very fine. It is compared, by those who have seen both, to that of the Lake of Geneva. The appearance of the shore is desolate in the extreme, in consequence of the long line of white driftwood—dry trunks of tamarisks and willows, brought down by the winter floods, and now bleaching fifteen feet above the summer level of the water, crusted over with white and bitter salt.
The present chapter is too short to allow of an account of the sea itself, of its nauseous taste, its high specific gravity, or of the peculiar sensations of bathing in its waters. On my first visit I had to swim out to the curious island, called Rujm el Bahr (the Cairn of the Sea), covered with stones, and connected by a stony causeway with the land—a place which seems to me to be the ruin of an artificial pier or jetty. When I got back, very sore and with smarting eyes, I soon became coated with white salt. On this day also I noticed flocks of wild-fowl swimming about half a mile from shore—a practical contradiction of the old fable that birds flying over the Dead Sea fall into it dead. I have never, however, found any living animal in the water, though many fish, brought down by the Jordan current, lie salted and pickled along the shores.
On the east side of the Jordan stretches a plain, corresponding to the Jericho plain, in which possibly Sodom once stood. Above this, on the south-east, rise the steep cliffs of the Ammonite ranges. On the west there are precipitous hills, 800 feet high, with a narrow beach, and a marl-cliff, or Sidd, below. Here lies the curious ruin of Kumrân, and beneath it is a cane-brake extending to the Feshkhah springs, where the beach is terminated by the promontory of the same name rising sheer from the water, its base surrounded with the huge fallen “fragments” from which the title Feshkhah seems derived. This spot, with the running stream, the broad shallow pool, the cane-brake, and the steep precipice behind, is perhaps the most picturesque on the shore.
There is one other remarkable natural feature in this interesting plain of Jericho which demands attention—the Kelt Valley, running from the spring of that name, and south of Erîha, past Jiljûlieh to Jordan. There seems no doubt that this is the Valley of Achor, in which Achan was stoned; and the bed of the valley is full of boulders and pebbles of every size, which would account for its being chosen as the scene of the execution, as there is hardly a stone in the greater part of the plain round it.
Wâdy Kelt has been also thought to be the Brook Cherith, and the scene seems well fitted for the retreat of the prophet who was fed by the “ ’Oreb,” whom some suppose to have been Arabs. The whole gorge is wonderfully wild and romantic; it is a deep fissure rent in the mountains, scarcely twenty yards across at the bottom, and full of canes and rank rushes between vertical walls of rock. In its cliffs the caves of early anchorites are hollowed, and the little monastery of St. John of Choseboth is perched above the north bank, under a high, brown precipice. A fine aqueduct from the great spring divides at this latter place into three channels, crossing a magnificent bridge seventy feet high, and running a total distance of three miles and three-quarters, to the place where the gorge debouches into the Jericho plain. On each side the white chalk mountains tower up in fantastic peaks, with long knife-edged ridges, and hundreds of little conical points, with deep torrent-seams between. All is bare and treeless, as at Mar Saba. The wild pigeon makes its nest in the “secret places of the stairs” of rock; the black grackle suns its golden wings above them; the eagle soars higher still, and over the caves by the deep pools the African kingfisher flutters; the ibex also still haunts the rocks. Even in autumn the murmuring of water is heard beneath, and the stream was one day swelled by a thunderstorm in a quarter of an hour, until it became a raging torrent, in some places eight or ten feet deep.
The mouth of the pass is also remarkable; for on either side is a conical peak of white chalk—one on the south called the “peak of the ascent” (Tuweil el ’Akabeh), while that to the north is named Bint Jebeil, “daughter of the little mountain,” or Nusb ’Aweishîreh, “monument of the tribes.”
These peaks are again, to all appearance, connected with a Christian tradition. Jerome speaks of Gebal and Gerizim as two mountains close together, shown in his day just west of Jericho. In the name Jebeil we may perhaps recognise the Gebal of this tradition; and in that case the “monument of the tribes” would be the traditional altar of Joshua in Ebal. If this be so, the southern peak must be the early Christian Gerizim; but the name is apparently lost.
The neighbourhood of Jericho has been a favourite retreat for hermits since the fourth century. In the twelfth it was full of monasteries, and the ruins of no less than seven of these buildings remain, without counting the chapels on Kŭrŭntŭl, or the Templars’ church in the fortress on the summit of the same mountain. The interior walls of these ruins were covered with frescoes, in some cases well preserved, and all the designs have painted inscriptions. The character used fixes the frescoes as not earlier than the twelfth century, and the masonry and pointed arches lead to the same conclusion regarding the date of these buildings.