Continuing our journey eastward, we soon find ourselves in a deep and narrow ravine. The floor of this wady, or ravine, is twelve or fifteen feet wide, while its rocky sides lift themselves up very steeply for three or four hundred feet, getting wider and yet wider towards the top. I now turn to my Bible, and find that once upon a time David ruled and reigned in Jerusalem. But Absalom rebelled against his father and drove the King from the city. Fleeing towards Jericho, David passed through this ravine. Then Shimei, one of Absalom’s servants, who was also one of the household of Saul, ran along on the edge of the precipice and cursed David, and rolled great stones down the steep bluff, trying to kill him, saying to him: “Come out, come out, thou bloody man, and thou man of Belial!”
AN ARAB HORSEMAN.
Passing on through this historic wady, we come now to where it opens wide its broad arms and forms a splendid valley of a hundred acres or more. “Halt! Halt!” cries one of the guards. “Halt!” Every horse is motionless. Every man is seized with terror. We expect the robbers to attack us at any moment. But we soon dismiss all hope on that line, for we see we are to be deprived of that privilege. Our guards simply want to exhibit to us their splendid feats of horsemanship. And ah me! how graceful they are. Each rider seems a part of his Arab horse. The guards rush at, and fight each other, to show us how skilled they are in this method of warfare, and how impossible it would be for us to resist, or escape from an attacking party of Bedouins. Each horse feels his keeping. He moves like a bundle of steel springs. It seems that he will leave the earth and fly through the air. These superb horses remind us of the beautiful story we have all read in the Arabian Nights, about those splendid Arabian mares that used to prance through the streets of Damascus, until break of day, and “then fly away towards Bagdad on enchanted carpets.”
Leaving here, the way is so rough that I can but say to my companions: “Pull off your coats, boys, pull off your coats, and roll up your sleeves, ‘for Jordan am a hard road to trabble.’” No saying was ever more true: Jordan am a hard road to travel!
We are now stopped for luncheon at a Kahn, or inn, half way from Jerusalem to Jericho, about eleven miles from either place. Once more I read in my Bible that a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves. The thieves beat the man, dragged him out to one side of the road, and left him for dead. But the Good Samaritan came along, took the poor Jew who had been beaten, put him on his donkey and carried him to an inn, and paid the inn-keeper to take care of him. Now, reader, what will you think when I tell you that I suppose I am stopping at the same inn where the Good Samaritan left the unfortunate Jew? Let me take you into my confidence and tell you why I think so. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho is the same now that it was 2,000 years ago. We know this from the remains of the old Roman aqueduct along the roadside. There is only one fountain on this road, and that one is close by this Kahn. I take it that every Kahn, or hotel, must, of necessity, be built near some fountain. Now if the road was the same in our Lord’s time as it is to-day, and if then, as now, there was only one fountain on the way, and if the inn, or Kahn, spoken of in the Bible was built by a fountain, then we are forced to the conclusion that it was near the spring from which we have just drunk.
