The Boy Travellers in the Far East, Part Fourth / Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey to Egypt and the Holy Land

by Thomas Wallace Knox

Frank was ready in a few moments with a brief account of Dan, which he ran off very glibly, as follows:

"The place was originally a Phœnician colony under the name of Laish, and was a populous city. A wandering band of Danites captured it, and named it after the founder of their tribe; they set up a graven image which they had stolen, and, as they had also stolen a priest along with the idol, they had a good basis for a system of religion.

"You can read in the eighteenth chapter of the Book of Judges how the Danites captured Laish, and stole their gods and the priest. You can read in Genesis xiv. how Abraham pursued the plunderers of Sodom to Dan, and recovered what they had stolen; and in the twelfth chapter of the First Book of Kings you will learn how Jeroboam set up a golden calf in one of the temples of the Danites, and established its worship.

"But there is something which has been preserved down to our day," Frank continued; "here is one of the sources of the Jordan. The Danites and the golden calf have been gone for many centuries, but the fountain of the Jordan is not exhausted. It may say with the brook, in the words of the poet—

"'Men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.'"

Following the directions of the guide, Frank and his companions went to the western side of the mound, where they found a pool or basin about fifty yards across, in which the water bubbled as in a fast-flowing spring. It was, indeed, a spring, and the flow was large enough to form a stream thirty feet wide and two feet deep. The guide said it was the largest of all the sources of the Jordan, but the stream it formed was not so long as that from Banias, and the latter again is shorter than the Hasbany, which rises near Hasbeiyah. The stream rising at Dan is called the Lesser Jordan on the maps, and unites with the Greater Jordan a few miles below, while all meet in Lake Huleh, as we have already learned.

HEAD-SPRING OF THE JORDAN NEAR HASBEIYAH.

There is another spring inside the basin on the top of the hill, but it is much smaller than the great fountain. There was a fine oak-tree close to this spring, and it furnished a grateful shade to the travellers while they were taking their well-earned lunch. A halt of something more than an hour found them ready to move on, and it was an easy ride of three or four miles from Dan to Banias, or Cesarea-Philippi.