“Stop, O, Brahmin,” said the beggar. “Erect not that wooden idol, for your temple will then be no more than others.”
“But make an idol of pure gold, and give it a pair of diamonds for eyes, and the whole world will come here to worship.”
The beggar waved his hand, and behold! an idol such as he had described stood upon the pedestal. The Brahmin turned to thank the stranger, but he had disappeared.
And that shrine has ever been the most sacred in all the land of India.
The Brahmin sent the wooden idol back to the factory, and they accepted it at twenty per cent. off, less the freight and charges for repacking. And they sold it to a retail cigar dealer, who used it for a sign in front of his shop.
The most interesting thing at Dan is the great fountain of the Jordan. It bursts out at the western, base of the mound, and forms a small pond, and out of this pond flows the stream, the largest in all Syria from a single source.
Less than an hour from Dan, over, a stony and marshy plain, brings us to Ain Belat, another fountain, and there is another of the same sort not far away. There is nothing particularly interesting here, and so we go on to Ain Mellahah, where we find the tents waiting for us near an old mill that stands by the spring.
Lake Huleh, a sheet of water about three miles by four, is close at hand, but it has no intrinsic attractions.
All around the lake is a marshy ground, spreading out on the North into a plain, that has some claims to fertility. The Bedouins cultivate it after a fashion, and some speculators have bought ground there and leased it out to the natives.
Syrian agriculture is of a very primitive kind. They use, in this country, the root of a tree for a plough, and they do little more than scratch the soil. An American plough, either ‘breaker’ or ‘subsoil,’ would drive the natives into confluent hysterics, and the sight of a steam-plough turning half, a dozen furrows at once would strike them dead with astonishment.