Stand dressed in living green.”
The stormy banks and swelling floods led me to imagine that the Jordan was a mile or two in width, and with waves like those of the ocean. What a difference between the imagination and the reality!
The Jordan is one of the most tortuous rivers in the world; a map of it looks like a line of Virginia fence, only more so, and I have heard somebody say that the Jordan river is so crooked that you can’t tell half the time which side you are on.
An hour and a half took us to Riha, better known as the site of Gilgal, and by some said to be the place where Jericho once stood. It is now a miserable village, one of the most forlorn in Palestine; and the principal objects that we saw were dirty children and dirtier adults, who all begged without distinction of age or sex, for “backsheesh.”
I attempted to take a sketch of a group of them, but they were evidently ashamed of themselves, and ran away.
We dined well and retired early; it rained nearly all night, and not only rained, but blew, and during the night I was wakened by the cold, wet canvas of the tent coming slap in my face. I dreamed something about trying to swim up Niagara in winter, and then I woke.
We called the dragoman and servants, and set things to rights as well as we could,—but the ground was so soft, that the tent pegs wouldn’t hold well. We were a forlorn lot in the morning, and started off after breakfast, very much as if we were going to our own funerals.
The stream was so swollen that we couldn’t ford it with safety, and so we went up a mile or two and crossed by an ancient aqueduct, half full of water.
