"And difficult climbing, Mr. Dinwiddie."
"Very difficult. Broken stairs and dizzy galleries, and deep
precipices, with the vultures floating in air down below me."
"What a place for men to live!"
"Fitter for the doves and swallows which inhabit the old
hermits' houses now. Yet not a bad place to live either, if
one had nothing to do in the world. Sit down and rest and let
us look at it."
"And I have got some luncheon for you, Mr. Dinwiddie. I should
have missed all this if you had not been with me. Papa would
never have come here."
There were many places in front of the cells where seats had
been cut out in the rock; and in one of these Mr. Dinwiddie
and I sat down, to eat fruit and biscuit and use our eyes; our
attendant Arab no doubt wondering at us all the while. The
landscape in view was exceedingly fine. We had the plains of
Jericho, green and lovely, spread out before us; we could see
the north end of the Dead Sea and the mouth of the Jordan; and
the hills of Moab, always like a superb wall of mountain
rising up over against us.
"Do you know where you are?" said Mr. Dinwiddie.
"Partly."
"The site of old Jericho is marked by the heaps and the ruins
which lie between us and our camp."
"Yes. That is old Jericho."
"Over against us, somewhere among those Moab hills, is the
pass by which the hosts of the 'sons of Israel' came down,
with their flocks and herds, to the rich plains over there, -
the plains of Moab."
"And opposite us, I suppose, somewhere along there in front of
old Jericho, is the place where the waters of the river failed
from below and were cut off from above, and the great space
was laid bare for the armies to pass over."
"Just over there. And there - Elijah and Elisha went over dry
shod, when Elijah smote with his mantle upon the waters; and
there by the same way Elisha came back alone, after he had
seen his master taken from him."
"Those were grand times!" I said, with a half breath.
"They were rough times."
"Still, they were grand times."
"I think, these are grander."
"But, Mr. Dinwiddie, such things are not done now as were done
then."
"Why not?"
"Why, how can you ask?"
"How can you answer?"
"Why, Mr. Dinwiddie, the river is not parted now, this river
nor any other, for the Lord's people to go over without
trouble."
"Are you sure?" said he, with the deep sweet look I had
noticed. "Do they never come now, in the way of their duty, to
an impassable barrier of danger or difficulty, through which
the same hand opens their path? Did you never find that they
do, in your own experience?"