Four days after their arrival they set out in company with about two thousand pilgrims of both sexes and of all nations, conducted by the mosselim, or governor of the city, to visit the river Jordan. Going out of the city by the gate of St. Stephen, they crossed the valley of Jehoshaphat, with part of Mount Olivet, passed through Bethany, and arrived at that mountain wilderness to which Christ was taken forth to be tempted by the Devil. Here some terrible convulsion of nature appears to have shattered and rent in pieces the foundations of the everlasting hills, swallowing up the summits, and thrusting up in their stead the bases and substructions, as it were, of the mighty masses. In the depths of a valley which traversed this “land of desolation, waste and wild,” were discovered the ruins of numerous cottages and hermits’ cells, many ascetics having formerly retired to this dreary region to waste away their lives in solitary penance. From the top of this mountain, however, the travellers enjoyed a prospect of extraordinary diversity, comprehending the mountains of Arabia, the Dead Sea, and the Plain of Jericho, into the last of which they descended in about five hours from the time of their leaving Jerusalem.
In this plain they saw the fountain of Elisha, shaded by a broad-spreading tree. Jericho itself had dwindled into a small wretched village, inhabited by Arabs; and the plain beyond it, extending to the Jordan, appeared to be blasted by the breath of sterility, producing nothing but a species of samphire, and similar stunted marine plants. Here and there, where thin sheets of water, now evaporated by the rays of the sun, had formerly spread themselves over the marshy soil, a saline efflorescence, white and glittering like a crust of snow, met the eye; and the whole valley of the Jordan, all the way to the Dead Sea, appeared to be impregnated with that mineral. They found this celebrated river, which in old times overflowed its banks, to be a small stream not above twenty yards in breadth, which, to borrow the words of the traveller, seemed to have forgotten its former greatness, there being no sign or probability of its rising, though the time, the 30th of March, was the proper season of the inundation. On the contrary, its waters ran at least two yards below the brink of its channel.
Proceeding onwards towards the Dead Sea, they passed over an undulating plain, in some places rising into hillocks, resembling those places in England where there have formerly been limekilns, and which may possibly have been the scene of the overthrow of the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah recorded in Genesis. On approaching the Dead Sea, they observed that on the east and west it was hemmed in by mountains of vast height, between whose barren ridges it stretched away, like a prodigious canal, farther than the eye could reach towards the south. On the north its limpid and transparent waters rattled along a bed of black pebbles, which being held over the flame of a candle quickly kindle, and, without being consumed, emit a black smoke of intolerable stench. Immense quantities of similar stones are said to be found in the sulphureous hills bordering upon the lake. None of the bitumen which the waves of this sea occasionally disgorge was then to be found, although it was reported that both on the eastern and western shores it might be gathered in great abundance at the foot of the mountains. The structures of fable with which tradition and “superstitious idle-headed Eld” had surrounded this famous sea vanished, like the false waters of the desert, upon examination. No malignant vapours ascended from the surface of the waves, carrying death to the birds which might attempt to fly over it. On the contrary, several birds amused themselves in hovering about and over the sea, and the shells of fish were found among the pebbles on the shore. Those apples of Sodom which, “atra et inania velut in cinerem vanescunt,” according to the expression of Tacitus, for a thousand years have furnished poets with comparisons and similes, were found, like many other beautiful things, to flourish only in song; there being in the neighbourhood of the lake no trees upon which they could grow. The surprising force of the water, which according to the great historian of Rome sustained the weight even of those who had not learned to buoy themselves up by art, was in a great measure found to exist, and subsequent experiments appear to support the opinion.
Returning thence to Jerusalem, and visiting Bethlehem and the other holy places in its vicinity, they at length departed on the 15th of April for Nazareth, which they found to be an inconsiderable village on the summit of a hill. Their road then lay through their former track until they struck off to the right through a defile of Mount Lebanon, entered the valley of Bocat, and emerged through a gorge of Anti-Libanus into the plain of Damascus, which, watered by “Abana and Pharphar, lucid streams,” unfolded itself before the eye in all that voluptuous beauty glittering in a transparent atmosphere which intoxicated the soul of the Arabian prophet, and caused him to pronounce it too generative of delight. The somewhat colder imagination of Maundrell was strongly moved by the view of this incomparable landscape. The City of the Sun (for such is the signification of its oriental name) lifted up its gilded domes, slender minarets, and tapering kiosks amid a forest of deep verdure; while gardens luxuriant in beauty, and wafting gales of the richest fragrance through the air, covered the plain for thirty miles around the city. The interior of the city was greatly inferior to its environs, and disappointed the traveller.
From Damascus, where they saw the Syrian caravan, commanded by the Pasha of Tripoli, and consisting of an army of pilgrims mounted on camels and quaintly-caparisoned horses, depart for Mecca, they proceeded to Baalbec, where they arrived on the 5th of May. The magnificent ruins of this city were then far less dilapidated than they are at present, and called forth a corresponding degree of admiration from the travellers. The site of Baalbec, on the cool side of a valley, between two lofty ridges of mountains, is highly salubrious and beautiful; and the creations of art which formerly adorned it were no way inferior (and this is the highest praise the works of man can receive!) to the beauties which nature eternally reproduces in those delicious regions. Time and the Ottomans, however, have shown that they are less durable.
When a place affords nothing for the contemplation of curiosity but the wrecks of former ages, it usually detains the footsteps of the traveller but a short time; and accordingly Maundrell and his companions quitted Baalbec early next morning, and, penetrating through the snowy defiles of Mount Lebanon into the maritime plains of Syria, arrived in two days at Tripoli. From hence, on the 9th of May, Maundrell departed with a guide to visit the famous cedars so frequently alluded to in the Scriptures, and which, from the prodigious longevity of the tree, may be those which the poets and prophets of Israel viewed with so much admiration. The extreme brevity of the original narrative permits us to describe this excursion in the traveller’s own words:—“Having gone for three hours across the plain of Tripoli, I arrived,” says he, “at the foot of Libanus; and from thence continually ascending, not without great fatigue, came in four hours and a half to a small village called Eden, and in two hours and a half more to the cedars.
“These noble trees grow among the snow, near the highest part of Lebanon, and are remarkable as well for their own age and largeness as for those frequent allusions made to them in the Word of God. Here are some of them very old and of a prodigious bulk, and others younger of a smaller size. Of the former I could reckon up only sixteen, and the latter are very numerous. I measured one of the largest, and found it twelve yards six inches in girth, and yet sound, and thirty-seven yards in the spread of its boughs. At about five or six yards from the ground it was divided into five limbs, each of which was equal to a great tree.”
Descending the mountain, and rejoining his friends at Tripoli, they departed thence together; and returning by the same road which they had pursued in their journey to Jerusalem, they arrived in a few days at Aleppo without accident or peril. Such is the history of that brief excursion, which, being ably and honestly described, has justly ranked Maundrell among celebrated travellers. The date of his death I have been unable to discover. This journey has been translated into several modern languages, and is held in no less estimation abroad than at home.
END OF VOL. I.