Papa declared himself still the next day unable for a very
long and exciting day's work; so it was decided that we should
put off till the morrow our ride to the Jordan and the Dead
Sea, and Mr. Dinwiddie proposed to conduct me to Mount
Quarantania to see the hermits' caves which are remaining
there. Of course they remain; for the walls of caves do not
crumble away; however, the staircases and rock ways which led
to the upper ones have many of them suffered that fate.
We had a delicious walk. First along the foot of the mountain,
skirting a little channel of running water which brings the
outflow of another fountain to enrich a part of the plain. It
was made good for the cultivation of a large tract; although
very wild and disorderly cultivation. As we went, every spot
within sight was full of interest; rich with associations; the
air was warm but pleasant; the warble of the orange-winged
blackbird - I don't know if I ought to call it a warble; it
was a very fine and strong note, or whistle, - sounding from
the rocks as we went by, thrilled me with a wild reminder of
all that had once been busy life there, where now the
blackbird's cry sounded alone. The ruins of what had been, -
the blank, that was once so filled up, - the forlorn repose,
where the stir of the ages had been so restlessly active. I
heard Mr. Dinwiddie's talk as we went, he was telling and
explaining things to me. I heard, but could not make much
answer. Thought was too full.
A good distance from home, that is, from the tents, we reached
the source of all that fertilising water the channel of which
we had followed up. How wild the source was too! No Saracenic
arch over that; the water in a full flow came out from among
the roots of a great tree - one of the curious thorny dôm
trees that grow in thickets over the plain. I believe our
Arabs called them dôm; Mr. Dinwiddie said it was a Zizyphus.
It was a very large tree at any rate, and with its odd thorny
branches and bright green foliage canopied picturesquely the
fine spring beneath it. All was wild and waste. The Arabs do
not even root out the dîm or nubk trees from the spots they
irrigate and cultivate; but the little channels of water flow
in and out among the stems and roots of the trees as they can.
Times are changed on Jericho's plain.
I thought so, as we turned up the slope of rock rubbish which
leads to the foot of the cave cliffs. The mountain here is a
sheer face of rock; and the caves, natural or artificial,
pierce the rock in tiers, higher and lower. The precipice is
spotted with them. The lowest ones are used now by the Arabs
to pen their sheep and quarter their donkeys; Mr. Dinwiddie
and I looked into a good many of them; in one or two we found
a store of corn or straw laid up. Many of the highest caves
could not be got at; the paths and stairs in the rock which
used to lead to them are washed and worn away; but the second
tier are not so utterly cut off from human feet. By a way
chiselled in the rock, with good nerves, one can reach them.
My nerves were good enough, and I followed Mr. Dinwiddie along
the face of the precipice till we reached some sets of caves
communicating with each other. These were partly natural,
partly enlarged by labour. Places were cut for beds and for
cupboards; there was provision of a fine water tank, to which,
Mr. Dinwiddie told me, there were stone channels leading from
a source some hundreds of feet distant; cistern and tubes both
carefully plastered. A few Abyssinian Christians come here
every spring to keep Lent, Mr. Dinwiddie said. How much more
pains they take than we do, I thought.