Greatest wonders of the world, as seen and described by famous writers

by Unknown

At present, the Dead Sea, terminated at the north by the sands we cross, extends to a length of about eighty kilometres, between two ranges of parallel mountains: to the east, those of Moab, eternally oozing bitumen, which stand this morning in their sombre violet; to the west, those of Judea, of another nature, entirely of whitish limestone, at this moment dazzling with sunlight. On both shores the desolation is equally absolute; the same silence hovers over the same appearances of death. These are indeed the immutable and somewhat terrifying aspects of the desert,—and one can understand the very intense impression produced upon travellers who do not know the Arabia Magna; but, for us, there is here only a too greatly diminished image of the mournful phantasmagoria of that region. Besides, one does not lose altogether the view of the citadel of Jericho; from our horses we may still perceive it behind us, like a vague little white point, but still a protector. In the extreme distance of the desert sands, under the trembling network of mirage, appears also an ancient fortress, which is a monastery for Greek hermits. And, finally, another white blot, just perceptible above us, in a recess of the mountains of Judah, stands that mausoleum which passes for the tomb of Moses—for which a great Mohammedan pilgrimage is soon about to start.

However, upon the sinister strand where we arrive, death reveals itself, truly sovereign and imposing. First, like a line of defence which it is necessary to surmount, comes a belt of drift-wood, branches and trees stripped of all bark, almost petrified in the chemical bath, and whitened like bones,—one would call them an accumulation of great vertebræ. Then there are some rounded pebbles as on the shore of every sea; but not a single shell, not a piece of seaweed, not even a little greenish slime, nothing organic, not even of the lower order; and nowhere else has this ever been seen, a sea whose bed is as sterile as a crucible of alchemy; this is something abnormal and disconcerting. Some dead fish lie here and there, hardened like wood, mummified in the naptha and the salts: fish of the Jordan which the current brought here and which the accursed waters suffocated instantly.

And before us, this sea flees, between its banks of desert mountains, to the troubled horizon with an appearance of never ending. Its whitish, oily waters bear blots of bitumen, spread in large iridescent rings. Moreover, they burn, if you drink them, like a corrosive liquor; if you enter them up to your knees you have difficulty in walking, they are so heavy; you cannot dive in them nor even swim in the ordinary position, but you can float upon the surface like a cork buoy.

Once the Emperor Titus, as an experiment, had several slaves bound together with iron chains and cast in, and they did not drown.

On the eastern shore, in the little sandy desert where we have just been marching for two hours, a line of a beautiful emerald serpentines; a few flocks and a few Arabian shepherds that are half bandits pass in the far distance.

Towards the middle of the day we reënter Jericho, whence we shall not depart until to-morrow morning, and there remain the tranquil hours of the evening for us to go over the still oasis.

When we are seated before the porch of the little inn of Jericho in the warm twilight, we see a wildly galloping horse, bringing a monk in a black robe with long hair floating in the wind. He is one of the hermits of the Mount of the Forty Days, who is trying to be the first to arrive and offer us some little objects in the wood of Jericho and shell rosaries from the Jordan.—At nightfall others come, dressed in the same black robe, and with the same thin hair around their bandit’s countenance, and enter the inn to entice us with little carvings and similar chaplets.

The night is sultry here, and a little heavy, quite different to the cold nights of Jerusalem, and just as the stars begin to shine a concert of frogs begins simultaneously from every side, under the dark entanglement of the balms of Gilead,—so continuous and, moreover, so discreet is it, that it seems but another expression of the tranquil silence. You hear also the barking of the sheep-dogs, below, on the side of the Arabian encampments; then, very far away, the drum and the little Bedouin flute furnish the rhythm for some wild fête;—and, at intervals, but very distinctly, comes the lugubrious falsetto of a hyena or jackal.

Now, here is the unexpected refrain of the coffee-houses of Berlin, which suddenly bursts forth, in ironical dissonance, in the midst of these light and immutable sounds of ancient evenings in Judea: the German tourists who have been here since sunset, encamped under the tents of agencies; a band of “Cook’s tourists” come to see and profane, as far as they can, this little desert.

It is after midnight, when everything is hushed and the silence belongs to the nightingales which fill the oasis with an exquisite and clear music of crystal.