The Jordan Valley was now one blaze of beautiful flowers, growing in a profusion not often to be found, even in more fertile lands. The ground was literally covered with blossoms: the great red anemone, like a poppy, grew in long tracts on the stony soil: on the soft marls patches of delicate lavender colour were made by the wild stocks; the Retem or white broom (the juniper of Scripture) was in full blossom, and the rich purple nettles contrasted with fields of the Kutufy or yellow St. John’s wort. There were also quantities of orange-coloured marigolds, and long fields of white and purple clover, tall spires of asphodel and clubs of snapdragon, purple salvias and white garlic, pink geraniums and cistus, tall white umbelliferous plants, and large camomile daisies, all set in a border of deep green herbage which reached the shoulders of the horses. Even the Zor was green, and Jordan’s banks covered with flowers, while the brown Turfah or tamarisks and the canebrake hid the rushing stream, and the white marl banks stood out in striding contrast.
Rain, and Bedawîn unpunctuality, delayed our move for several days, but on Tuesday the 10th of March we got to Wâdy Fâr’ah—the open plain north of the Sŭrtŭbeh, which Vandevelde marks as “beautiful” on his map. Drake and the men went on before, and I sat on a box waiting for the camels. Six Arabs appeared, at last, on horseback, escorting a drove of about fifteen camels, ranging from a patriarch with a pendent lower lip to a little woolly thing not as high as a pony, who came along making constant attempts to get refreshment from his mother. Very picturesque no doubt! but they had no proper saddles. The owners proposed to put our boxes in sacks, as they put their own camp-furniture. We bound the things on somehow, and various little negro boys mounted the humps of the camels. They had no bridles, and took seven hours to go as many miles, stopping to crop the grass at intervals; but we were thankful to get any beasts at all in this wild region.
We commenced the triangulation from the new camp at once, and rode out on the 11th to a hill north of it, whence a fine view of the Ghôr could be obtained. On the south was the wide valley, flanked by steep ranges, with the Sŭrtŭbeh in the foreground, and the gleaming Dead Sea in the far distance. On the north the valley became narrower, and its surface was broken into mud-islands, and marl mounds scored with hundreds of intricate watercourses—a region well called by the Arabs “the Mother of Steps.” In the middle of it the snaky Jordan wriggled along, with brown tamarisk swamps on either bank; far away were black volcanic ranges and the white dome of snowy Hermon, with the long white line of Anti-Libanus to the west Eastward was the rugged Mount Gilead, crowned by a Crusading castle (Kŭl’at er Rubud) and on the west the shapeless hills north of Nablus, the mediæval land of Tampne.
On Wednesday the 25th, we at length got a fine morning, and spite of the very boggy nature of the ground, we set out for Wâdy Mâleh, the only place at a suitable distance where water was reported. It was not a change for the better by any means. The Fâr’ah Valley is a most delightful place in early spring, when it does not rain, but Wâdy Mâleh was quite the worst camp we ever went into. Down the Fâr’ah a perennial stream flows from near Tullûza, in which stream we may perhaps recognise the “much water” between Salem and Ænon. Part of the course is through a narrow gorge, between low precipitous cliffs of dark limestone, with iron-coloured bands of flint and many natural caverns. Lower down it broadens into an open vale a mile across, the whole of which was now knee-deep in beautiful flowers. The canes in the stream had been swept down, and piled in heaps, covered with mud, in consequence of the late floods. The oleander bushes grow all along the bed of the river in great luxuriance, and they were now in full flower.
Leaving this charming valley hidden among its rolling hills, we ascended northwards on to the Bukei’a, or plateau, on which the ruin ’Ainûn (Ænon) stands. Here the flowers were also abundant; the pheasant’s-eye was as large almost as an anemone; two beautiful species of bugloss formed patches of sky-blue, and the pink cistus (comparatively rare in Palestine) grew between the rocks; the veronicas, blue and red, with here and there a bunch of the dark iris (the “lily of the field”), were interspersed with large maroon-coloured velvety arums. The plain is good corn-land, but seems to have a bad natural drainage; and our mules floundered in deep bogs, sometimes up to the girths.
Still farther north, we began to descend a long valley, and came on a different kind of country. A basaltic outbreak appeared, and cliffs tilted in every direction. The valley-bed was strewn with fragments of hard basalt. Passing over a bare ridge, where the beautiful white Retem broom (Elijah’s juniper) abounded, we descended into a most desolate valley, where, between green rolling hills like those of the Judean desert, a muddy stream was flowing. We had ridden fifteen miles, and it now began to rain again. We found, to our dismay, that this was where we had to camp, as no other supply of water existed in a position central to the new work.
The valley comes down from a narrow gorge, dominated by a Crusading castle, and beneath this is a great outbreak of basalt. We rode up the gorge, hoping to find a better place; but the pass was too rugged to expect to get camels up it in the then state of the road, so we resigned ourselves to a camp in the lower ground by the stream.
We soon made a still more unpleasant discovery. The valley was full of clear springs, but they were all tepid and salt. The head spring has a temperature of 100° F., and the stream from it is about 80° F. If the Survey was to be done at all, it appeared that we should have to drink brackish water for ten days or more. Here, then, we sat down on the wet grass, in a driving drizzle of rain, by the brackish stream; not a soul was to be seen, either Bedawî or peasant, and it was evident that food would have to be brought from a distance.
The mules soon arrived with our tents and beds, which, though soaked with rain, we set up on the bare ground.
News of the camels reached us after dark; they had been unable to struggle any farther, and one had sprained its leg slipping on the rocks; they had, therefore, halted a few miles farther south.