CONVENT OF MAR SABA.
Only once, when I crossed the Mer de Glace at midnight, have I seen anything to compare with the wild, unearthly impressiveness of one view of this famous monastery. We had encamped at nightfall about a couple of miles above Mar Saba. The stars were shining with extraordinary brilliancy in a cloudless sky, and the moon was just coming above the horizon. I suggested an excursion along the bottom of the ravine, so as to see the convent from beneath. On proposing this to the Sheikh, he of course declared that it was impossible, no one had ever done it—there was no road—he would not answer for our heads if we attempted it, with much more to the same purpose. But finding us determined to make a start, and that there was a prospect of backshish, he withdrew his objections and despatched a party of Bedouin as guides and escort. The bottom of the gorge was in almost total darkness, but we could see the jagged peaks overhead, silvered with the moonlight. Stumbling along the bed of the Kedron, now perfectly dry, winding in and out amongst huge boulders, scrambling over masses of rock which blocked up the narrow passage, we made our way down the valley. No sound was heard, save our own footsteps and the howling of jackals. Every now and then, emerging silently as a ghost from behind a projecting crag or from the mouth of a cave, a Bedouin, armed with his long gun, would step forward, speak a few words to our escort, and then silently disappear. At length we reached a point immediately beneath the convent. The moon had now risen high enough to pour a flood of intense white light upon it whilst we were still wrapped in gloom. It seemed to be detached from earth, and to hang suspended in the heavens. The solitary palm tree, said to have been planted by St. Saba himself, stood out clear and distinct, every frond relieved against the deep blue of the sky behind it. Even our Bedouin escort, usually so insensible to natural scenery, seemed awed and impressed by the wild weird grandeur of the view.
The Valley of Kidron begins its course on the east side of the Temple at Jerusalem, and runs down to the Dead Sea, through a barren, arid, waterless waste. It is thus the probable scene of the prophetic vision in which Ezekiel beholds the glory of “the latter days,” when waters, issuing from beneath the altar, shall flow eastward in an ever deepening stream, bringing with them fertility and beauty wherever they come. “Very many trees” are seen to spring up along its banks on either side. Reaching the bitter, stagnant, poisonous waters of the Dead Sea, its desolate solitudes become the haunts of busy life. Fishers spread their nets from En-Eglaim to En-Engedi, for the fish have become as “the fish of the great sea, exceeding many.” “And by the river upon the bank thereof, on this side and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed: it shall bring forth new fruit according to his months, because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary: and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine.”[[88]] Reading such promises of future blessings amid these desolate and sterile regions, we are impressively reminded that when “the spirit be poured upon us from on high, the wilderness shall be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be accounted for a forest, ... and the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever.”[[89]]
THE WILDERNESS OF JUDÆA.
The strange unique conformation of the country which we noticed as we approached Mar Saba becomes even more extraordinary as we continue our journey eastward. The soil consists of a soft chalk or white marl, furrowed in every direction by a labyrinth of valleys and pits from fifty to a hundred feet deep, cut, ages ago, by torrents long since dried up, leaving fantastic flat-topped mounds of every conceivable shape, which Maundrell aptly compares to gigantic lime kilns.
NORTHERN SHORE OF THE DEAD SEA.
In a little more than three hours we find ourselves descending into the Valley of the Jordan and the Dead Sea. Reaching the plain, we ride through an extensive cane brake where the reeds are higher than our heads, and which is the haunt of wild boars, wolves, jackals, and leopards, and from which lions were driven out “from the swelling of Jordan.”[[90]]