The monastery in Wâdy Kelt was dedicated to the anchorite St. John of Choseboth; the names of Athanasius, Gerasmius of Calamon, and St. Joachim—traditionally held to have here lived in seclusion—are written above the figures of three saints on its walls. A barbarous inscription in Greek and Arabic states the monastery to have been restored, by a certain Abraham and his brothers, of the Christian village of Jufna.
The Kŭrŭntŭl chapels, which we visited in 1873, are perched half-way up the crag, and full of frescoes with the names of Gregory, Basil, Chrysostom, Athanasius, and other fathers of the Church. In the great monastery of St. John of Beth Hogla, half-way between Jericho and the Dead Sea, we found the names, Andrew of Crete, John Eleemon (Patriarch of Jerusalem, in 630 A.D.), Sophronius of Jerusalem, and Sylvester, Pope of Rome (probably the famous Sylvester II., 998 A.D.). The remaining monastic sites include St. John on Jordan, now called “Jews’ Castle,” and Tell Mogheifir, or Tell el Kursi (“mound of the throne”), in which name we perhaps find a trace of that of the old monastery of St. Chrysostom, rebuilt in the twelfth century.
Such was the work which occupied us in the end of November, 1873. The Arabs round us were willing and intelligent; they made good guides, and shot for us, not only birds, but also a fine “bedn,” or ibex. The Sheikh Jemîl, an old friend of Dr. Tristram’s, accompanied me day after day, and often inquired after the Doctor, whom he called “the father of the beard.” He rode an elegant little dromedary, which was extremely tame. The great speed which could be got out of the animal was surprising, but the rider seemed regularly shaken to pieces by the pace, when keeping up with my horse at a canter. He was a good shot, and one of the best fellows I ever met among the Bedawîn, though avaricious, as are all Arabs who come much in contact with Europeans.
The autumn rains commenced in 1873 with a great thunderstorm on the 24th of November; and now the face of the country suddenly changed, and the cool, clear, delightful autumn weather set in—most treacherous of all the seasons in Palestine, as the sun then draws out the reeking miasma from the softened ground. The plains became green with tender grass, the great cloud-banks rose behind the hills, and I awoke one morning to hear, to my dismay, the croaking of frogs close to the camp. With the experience of one more year, we should at once have moved to higher ground. We stayed however where we were, and suffered in consequence.
The climate of Jericho must have altered greatly since Josephus described the place as “a region fit for gods.” Thrice we visited the Jordan Valley; three times the terrible remittent fever of Jericho threatened valuable lives in our party, and once it proved fatal. The change of climate is due, I imagine, to the decay of cultivation. Herod planted palm-groves, and watered them by aqueducts still remaining. The groves existed in the seventh, and even in the twelfth century; but now only two trees can be found. The Crusaders also undertook cultivation, and made sugar at the ruined mills under Quarantania, still called the “sugar mills.” At the present day the land is quite as productive as ever; but the Arabs disdain agriculture, and the inhabitants of Erîha are so enervated, by the climate, that they bring men down from the hills to reap their scanty crops. Every kind of vegetable will grow here—tomatoes, vegetable marrows, grapes and indigo; yet the beautiful streams of Kelt and of Elisha’s Fountain (’Ain es Sultân) are allowed to run to waste, or to form malarious pools, and thus the unfilled lands in the plain reek with miasma.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE JORDAN VALLEY.
THE Jordan Valley is not only the most remarkable feature of Palestine, but one of the most curious places in the world. It has no exact counterpart elsewhere, and the extraordinary phenomenon of clouds sweeping as a thick mist 500 feet below the level of the sea, is one which few European eyes have seen, but which we witnessed in the early storms of the spring of 1874.
The Jordan rises as a full-grown river, issuing from the cave at Baniâs, about 1000 feet above the level of the Mediterranean. In the short distance of twelve miles it falls not less than 1000 feet, passing through the papyrus-marshes, and reaching the Huleh Lake. This lake is four miles long, and from its southern extremity to the north end of the Sea of Galilee is ten and a half miles. The second lake has been determined, by our line of levels, as 682 feet below the Mediterranean; thus in twenty-six and a half miles there is a fall of 1682 feet, or more than sixty feet to the mile.
The Sea of Galilee is twelve miles and a half long, or about the length of Windermere, and thence the Jordan flows sixty-five miles measuring in a straight line (the bends make it a good deal more) to the Dead Sea, 1292 feet below the Mediterranean. The fall in this distance is, however, not regular. Above the Jisr Mujâmi’a it is over forty feet to the mile. From the south end of the Sea of Galilee to the Dâmieh ford is a distance of forty-two miles, and a fall of only 460 feet. From the Dâmieh to the mouth of Wâdy el ’Aujeh is thirteen miles, with sixty feet fall, and thence to the Dead Sea is ten miles, with ninety feet of fall.
It will be seen from above that the total direct length of Jordan is about 104 miles, or only half the length of the Thames; that the fall to the Sea of Galilee is over sixty feet to the mile; thence to the Dâmieh, at first forty feet, afterwards not quite eleven feet per mile; from the Dâmieh to the ’Aujeh not much over four and a half feet to the mile; and for the last ten miles, about nine feet per mile. The break down of the immense chasm may thus be said to commence immediately north of the Sea of Galilee.