CHAPTER XII.

THE DEAD SEA.

GOLDEN SLEEVE appeared one morning, arrayed in the arsenal, and muttering something about "bad people," announced that the horses were saddled for the excursion to Jordan and the Dead Sea.

You are still likely to fall among thieves, going down to Jericho, and the only safety is in being robbed before you start, by purchasing permission of the Arabs. The tribes that haunt the hill country near Jerusalem, are not entirely friendly toward each other; but by retaining a Shekh of one of the most powerful among them, you insure tolerable security for the excursion.

The Shekh Artoosh, who awaited us at the foot of the Mount of Olives-for a Bedoueen fears to enter the city, whose very walls his stern wilderness chafes-was the ideal Bedoueen. He had the arched brow, the large, rich, sad and tender eyes,

which are peculiar to the Orient, and which painters aim to give to pictures of Christ. It was the most beautiful and luminous eye I have ever seen. The other features were delicate, but full of force, and the olive transparency of his complexion set his planet-like eyes, as evening light the stars. There was that extreme elegance in his face, and in the supple grace of his movement which imagination attributes to noblemen, and which is of the same quality as the refinement of a high-bred Arabian horse.

He wore, over a white robe, a long mantle of black goat's hair cloth, and his head was covered with the true Bedoueen head-dress-a Mecca handkerchief, or small shawl of cloth of gold, with red borders and a long rich fringe. This is folded once, and laid smoothly upon the head. One end falls behind, between the shoulders, showering the fringe about the back; and the other is carried forward over the right shoulder, and caught up upon the left cheek, so half shielding the face, like the open vizor of a helmet. vizor of a helmet. A double twist of goat's hair cord, binding the shawl smoothly, goes around the head, so that the top of it is covered only with the gold.

Picture under this that mystic complexion of the desert, steep it all in Syrian light, and you have what only the Eastern sun can show. Mark, too,

the Shekh's white mare, valued even there at purses equal to a thousand dollars, and on whom he moves as flexibly as a sunbeam on the

waters.

We skirted the Mount of Olives on the way to Bethany. In a quarter of an hour we were in the hill-wilderness, the mountains that separate the valley of the Jordan from the plain of the sea. Our path was a zigzag way upon the slope. There are no houses or gardens, and Bethany, lying blighted in a nook of the hills, is only beautiful because she lived there, who loved much. A few olive-trees and blossoming vines, linger, like fading fancies of greenness and bloom along the way. A few Arabs pass with guns and rusty swords. You feel that you are in a wild country, where the individual makes his own laws.

Artoosh, like our Shekh of the desert, was accompanied by an older dignitary, a kind of Grand Vizier, perhaps, or genius of the army. In narrow passes of the road, throats and gorges of the hills, overhung by steep cliffs, the Vizier rode forward and surveyed the position, gun in hand, and finger on the trigger. Several times he rode back to Artoosh, and after a low council they gallopped off together, and reappeared upon the hills beyond, riding around corners of the rock, and into bushy places where foes might lurk. But it

was quite their affair. We were only passengers, and watched their beautiful riding with unmingled delight in its grace, and went musing and singing along in the monotonous noonlight, as in the safe solitude of a city.

Sunset showed us, from the brow of the mountains, the plain of the Jordan. Far away upon the other side, it was walled by the misty range of the Moab. Utter silence brooded over the valleyand a silence as of death. No feeling of life saluted our gaze. From the Alps you look southward into the humming luxuriance of Italy, and northward into the busy toil of Switzerland, and the Apennines are laved with teeming life. But of all valleys that I had ever beheld from mountain tops, this was the saddest. Not even the hope of regeneration into activity dawned in the mind. I was looking down into the valley of the Shadow of Death.

Upon the brow of the mountain where we stood, tradition indicates the spot of the temptation. The Rev. Dr. Duck was not at hand to destroy the identity, and I was willing to believe. We descended rapidly into the plain, and the camp was pitched among the green shrubs and trees that overhung a stream. It was Elisha's brook that ran sweet and clear, just behind our tent.

It was a wild night. The heat was deadly, and

the massive mountains rose grimly before us, as if all fair airs were for ever walled away. The sky was piled with jagged clouds. Occasional showers pattered upon the tents, and keen lightning angrily flashed, while low, dull thunder was hushed and flattened in the thick air. None of us slept. It was a weird and awful night.

A lurid dawn reddened over the valley. The leaden clouds caught the gleam upon their reef-like edges, but folded over again into deeper blackness. They clung affrighted to the mountains, which were only a mysterious darkness in the dawn. A mocking rainbow spanned the blind abysses, and the east was but a vast vapour suffused with crimson luminousness. The day was fateful and strange, and glared at us, vengeful-eyed, like a maniac. We were in a valley, a thousand feet below the Mediterranean. The Dead Sea had infected it with death. This was the spirit and gloom of the sea, without its substance. Thus it would compel the very landscape and atmosphere to its appalling desolation before it overflowed it with its water.

Through the vague apprehension of that supernatural morning I heard the gurgling song of the little brook of Elisha, flowing clear and smooth out of the dark mountain region, and threading that enchanted silence with pleasant sound. I ran to