The Holy Land and Syria

by Frank G. Carpenter

The Jordan is not navigable. Along its whole course it has no wharves, no boats, and no cities or villages of any account. It has numerous fords but no bridges of any size. The wooden bridge about six miles above the Dead Sea is a toll bridge, with fords above and below it. The people use it only when the river is high. At other times the caravans save the toll by passing through the fords.

On its course from Galilee to the Dead Sea the river narrows and widens. Now it is a swift, black, sullen current flowing between ugly mud banks covered with refuse, now it comes close to the mountains which border the valley on either side, and down here at the Dead Sea it reaches a width of five hundred feet, being so shallow that you could almost wade across it.

The water gathers the denudations of the mountains. It changes in colour from season to season, and in the spring spreads out in floods over the valley. It is said that the parting of the water in order that Joshua and the Israelites might pass over was when the river was at its highest.

At this point in its course it is not a sweet water. It has gathered the salts from this arid country and is so full of organic matter that those who carry it home for baptisms have to boil and filter it to get rid of its disagreeable smell. I have several canteens which I filled myself from the stream, or rather with the water which I brought in wine bottles from the Jordan and had boiled and filtered before it was put into the cans. If I ever have a grandchild it shall be baptized with this water. I bought the canteens at the Jordan Hotel here at Jericho where they are kept on hand to be sold to the tourists and pilgrims. A vast number of them are carried away every year.

Let us go from Jericho to the land where the Moabites live on the other side of the river. It is only a few miles away, and we can drive there in a carriage. As we start, the great white blazing sun is climbing the blue above Mount Nebo, and the faint streak of the Dead Sea, with the haze that hangs always over it, can be seen down the valley. Our soldier gallops in front to scare off the Bedouins and we wind our way lazily in and out through the wheat fields. Leaving these we enter a desert on the edge of which stands Gilgal, where the Israelites first encamped after crossing the Jordan, and then go on through thorny scrub among gullies and hills until we approach the long fringes of thicket which border the river. There is more vegetation as we near this, and we go through the bushes until we come to a creek no wider than a city street. It looks like some of the small streams of our central states. I know many such in Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio, and there is one of just about the same size which goes by the name of Goose Creek in Loudoun County, Virginia. The Rhine and the Hudson, the Potomac, or even the Shenandoah, could swallow the Jordan without bulging, and just now it is so small that in the United States it would not be called a river at all.

Nevertheless, the current is swift at this place and we hire a fisherman to take us across. He charges twenty-five cents for the boat, and for this rows us up and down stream for an hour. He stands up as he rows and leans on the oars. We go to the other side of the Jordan and climb out through the willows. How quiet it is! The only sounds are the ripple of the stream as it washes the banks and the songs of sweet-voiced birds in the trees at our left. As we return we lean over and bathe our hands in the Jordan. The water is cold. When taken up in a bottle it looks like weak milk. We taste it. It is acrid and salty and we spit it out in disgust.

Here Christ is said to have been baptized of John. At this place, which is about three miles from the Dead Sea, the water at ordinary times is four or five feet deep. Most of the pilgrims come here, and it is the scene of tens of thousands of baptisms a year. The chief time of baptizing is Easter, when the Russians come by the thousands and when other members of the Greek Church unite with them in a great caravan which journeys here and camps.

Leaving the Jordan we make our way down the valley to the Dead Sea. The road goes through the thorn bushes and twists about through the barren hills. The land is salty and alkaline and all nature is dead. How hot the sun is, and how glaring! Our eyes smart, and horrid flies crawl with legs of glue over our faces. We try to brush them off but they alight and bite us again.

Now we are on the shore of the sea, which is covered with pebbles and driftwood. It looks more like a lake than a sea, and is just about the size of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. It is only fifty miles long and ten miles in width and we can see from one side of it to the other.