Here I stayed behind the rest of the party for a considerable time, charmed with the spectacle of nature, and revolving over the incidents of Herodian history, so vividly portrayed by Josephus.
Then rejoined my friends, by galloping along a Roman road, paved with blocks of dark basalt.
But before leaving this place, I must express my surprise at any person that has been there imagining for a moment that it can be the Gadara of Scripture.
The distance from the lake is so great as to be utterly incompatible with the recorded transactions in the Gospels—having valleys and high hills intervening; and even supposing the miracle of relieving the demoniac to refer not to the city but to a territory named Gadara, it is inconceivable that the territory belonging to this city (Umm Kais) could extend beyond the deep natural crevasse of the river Yarmuk, and then rise up a high mountain, to descend again into a plain, all before reaching the lake.
Our descent to the Yarmuk was long and steep; and upon the plain which it intersects, the heat exceeded any that I had ever encountered anywhere.
The air was like fire. Such a day I shall never forget.
The Yarmuk is so considerable a river that the Arabs call it Sheree’a, as they do the Jordan—only qualifying the latter as the larger one. It is called the Sheree’a el Menâdhĕrah, from a party of Bedaween occupying its banks in the interior.
The crevasse through which it issues is wild and romantic in the extreme. High cliffs of basalt are the confines of the water. This, on reaching the plain, is parted with several streams, (to compare great things with small,) in the fashion of the Nile or the Ganges; which the Jordan is not, either at its entrance into this lake or its entrance into the Dead Sea.
All the streams are fringed with oleander; and, in the extreme heat of the day, the horses enjoyed not only their drinking, but their wading through the rolling water.
This was the boundary between Bashan and Gilead, through the latter of which we had hitherto been travelling, and gave name to the great battle A.D. 637, where the victory obtained by the fierce Khalid and the mild Abu Obeidah decided the fate of Palestine, and opened the way of the Moslems to Jerusalem.