and renewing his efforts to keep up with me, he was at length totally disabled; and our Protestant friends, who were now about to return home, engaged to get him into the village, and have him carefully attended to, there and at Nabloos, till he should be able to return to his family at Jerusalem. I left him under a large tree, gazing wistfully after me, and endeavouring to persuade me not to go down to that Gehennom of a place, Beisân. [94]
My forward journey lay through fine olive-grounds and stubble-fields of wheat. In an hour we passed Kayaseer, a wretched but ancient place, with exceedingly old olive-trees about it. Then going on for some time among green bushes and straggling shoots of trees, we descended to the water-bed of a valley. Once more upon a Roman road, on which at twenty minutes’ distance was a prostrate Roman milestone, but with no inscription to be seen; perhaps it was on the under side, upon the ground. Then the road, paved as it was with Roman work, rose before us on a steep slope, to a plain which was succeeded by the “Robbers’ Valley,” (Wadi el Hharamîyeh,) in which we met two peasants driving an ass, and inquired of them “Is the plain of the Jordan safe?”—meaning, Are there any wild Bedaween about? The reply was “It
is safe;” but the whole conversation consisted of four words in the question, and one in the answer.
Over a precipitous and broken rocky hill,—the worst piece of road I ever met with,—till we came suddenly upon the grand savage scenery of the Ghôr, with the eastern barrier of the mountains of Gilead. The river Jordan is not visible, as is the case in most parts, till one almost reaches the banks.
Here the vegetation had changed its character,—leaving all civilisation of olive-trees behind, and almost all consisting of oak and hawthorn. We had instead the neb’k or dôm-tree, and the ret’m or juniper of Scripture; the heat excessive.
At the junction of the Valley with the Ghôr are three Roman milestones, lying parallel and close side by side,—all of them in the shape and size stereotyped throughout the country. This, then, was probably a measured station of unusual importance; and from it the acropolis of Bethshan just comes into view. This is known in the country by the name of El Hhus’n.
The ground was in every direction covered with black basalt fragments, among which, however, was corn stubble remaining; and we were told that the crop belonged to the people of Tubâs.
We kept upon a straight path leading directly up to Beisân, which all the way was intersected by running streams issuing from the hills on our left, and going to the Jordan.
The water was not often good for drinking; but
at most of these rivulets our attendant, Suliman Bek’s horseman, alighted to say his prayers, out of fright on account of the Arab Bedaween.