waistcoat. Then the birds carolling so happily, recalling the well-known lines—
“And Jordan, those sweet banks of thine,
With woods so full of nightingales.”
The songsters that I heard were certainly neither the linnets nor goldfinches of other parts of Palestine, but must have been the bulbul, the note of which, though rich and tender in expression, is not however the same with that of English nightingales.
Then we came to the bridge called Jis’r el Mejâma’a, which is in tolerably good condition, with one large and several smaller arches in two rows, and a dilapidated khan at the western end. I crossed over the bridge into the territory of Gilead.
The khan has been a strong edifice, but the stones of the massive gateway, especially the great keystone, are split across, as if from the effects of gunpowder.
When that bridge was erected, the country must have been in safe and prosperous circumstances; the beauty of the scenery was not found in contrast to the happiness of the people; there must have been rich commerce carried on between the far east and the towns of Palestine; and it is in reference to such a fortunate period that the wandering minstrels, even now among the Bedaween, sing the songs of the forty orphan youths who competed
in poetic compositions under the influence of love for an Arab maiden at the bridge of Mejâma’a.
The name is derived from the meeting of two branches of the Jordan in that place after having separated above. Below the bridge the bed of the river is very rocky, and the course of the water disturbed, but above the “meeting of the waters” all is beautifully smooth and tranquil; wild aquatic birds enjoying their existence on its surface, and the banks fringed with willows and oleanders. How grateful is all this to the traveller after a scorching ride of several hours.
Then the river, and with it our road, deflected back to the western hills; again the river wound in serpentine sinuosities about the middle of the plain, with little islands and shallow sands within its course. I am not sure that the delight we experienced was not enhanced by the circumstance of travelling upwards against stream. Whenever tourists find the country safe enough for the purpose, and have leisure at command, I certainly recommend to them this district of Jordan, between Beisân and Tiberias: of course this presupposes that they visit Nazareth before or afterwards.
Occasionally we came to rings of stones laid on the ground,—these mark the graves of Arabs of the vicinity; then a cattle enclosure, fenced in by a bank of earth, and thorns piled on the top. All about this were subterranean granaries for corn, having apertures like wells, but empty. Close to