"The camp is a scene of confusion, and long before morning a disorderly procession is formed, thousands of torches are waved, and the great crowd presses forward in order to enter the sacred stream at daybreak. Hundreds of people are in the river at the same moment, and not a year passes without some of them being swept away and drowned in the swift current. Men, women, and children are crowded together indiscriminately, and the wonder is that so few accidents occur. The whole ceremony is over in two or three hours, and then the pilgrims turn back from the Jordan and return to Jerusalem.
RECENT ASPECT OF THE PLAIN OF JERICHO.
"Just as we left the Jordan it began to rain, and we had a disagreeable ride to Riha, which some writers consider the site of Gilgal; others think it marks the position of ancient Jericho; but the general opinion is that Jericho was farther to the west. The modern Jericho is a village of fifty or sixty houses, and its inhabitants are a degenerate race of people, who live by a little agriculture and by what they can beg or steal from visitors. We found our tents pitched a little out of the village, and were a good deal annoyed by the natives, who crowded around us and could not be driven away. The children begged for backsheesh, and the men wanted to amuse us with a 'fantasia,' or dance, but we had been told it was a stupid performance, and declined to witness it.
AIN-ES-SULTAN, OR FOUNTAIN OF ELISHA (FROM THOMSON'S "THE LAND AND THE BOOK").
"There is a tower near the village, which is called by some 'The House of Zaccheus,' but the indications are that it was not built till the time of the Crusades, long after Zaccheus was laid in his grave. We did not have time to visit it, nor did we go to the Ain-es-Sultan, or Sultan's Spring, which is also known as the Fountain of Elisha. It is a fine spring, the water rather warm in temperature, as we are told, and varies but little in volume throughout the year. Biblical students who have been here say there can be no doubt it is the very fountain which was healed by the prophet Elisha, and is therefore well entitled to bear his name. There are several aqueducts by which the water was once carried over the plain, and used for irrigating the fields, but they are now so much ruined as to be of little consequence.