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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph hy Maynard Owen Williams 



CONTEMPLATING A CHANGE OF STYLES 

 ALONG THE EUPHRATES 



"Made in Germany" is stamped all over the 

 garish dress of this Euphrates Valley maiden. 

 Nowhere did trade follow the railway to a 

 greater extent than along- the Bagdad line, and 

 in the spring of 1914 Aleppo was a thriving 

 commercial center of German trade. At the 

 hotels engineers and merchants crowded the 

 dinning-rooms and talked of a mighty future 

 in Mesopotamia. That summer, war came, and 

 the burning question of styles was rapidly 

 succeeded by one of food enough to keep body 

 and sou] together. 



the Honey Spring- and the Milk Spring, 

 arc the sources of I )og River, from whose 

 clear, cold waters busy Beirut is now re- 

 freshed. 



Even on the hot plain between Mount 

 f lermon and the Lake of I Inlch the water 

 which bubbles up from subterranean 

 sources is very cold. At Sliiba, high up 

 on the sides of Mount I lermon, the water 

 emerges from the rock with a tempera- 

 ture of 38 degrees Fahrenheit, and at 



Banias, where a temple to Pan once 

 stood, and where Herod the Great 

 erected a temple over the spring in honor 

 of Augustus, the sparkling water has a 

 temperature of 42 degrees. In summer, 

 after a long hot walk across the plain, it 

 is. most refreshing to sit in the shade of 

 Honey Valley and eat luscious Lebanon 

 grapes, cooled by dipping them in the liv- 

 ing water of the stream. 



Judea is not well supplied with springs, 

 and even a tiny trickle is sufficient to gain 

 a name for the place. When the car- 

 riages between Jerusalem and Nablus 

 dropped from the barren Judean plateau 

 to the first of the broad Samarian valleys, 

 every one used to get out to drink from 

 the spring at Khan el Lubban. 



DEAD-SEA BATHING AN ORDEAL WHICH 

 ATE TOURISTS UNDERGO 



The Jericho region is supplied with 

 three kinds of water, and this prodigality, 

 coupled with the historic fame of the 

 Jordan Valley, has furnished a regular 

 formula of bathing for pilgrims to this 

 hot depression, nearly a quarter of a mile 

 below the level of the sea. 



Of course, every tourist has to bathe 

 in the Dead Sea ; it is the thing to do. 

 Lucky is the man whose skin does not 

 crack in the heat of the valley, for Dead 

 Sea water on a cracked skin or the film 

 of the eye reminds one of boiling oil and 

 the Spanish Inquisition. Having per- 

 formed the necessary rite and dutifully 

 completed an experience which can be re- 

 corded in the diary of the trip, the poor 

 pilgrim, laved with a tenacious fluid that 

 seems to be composed of salt, kerosene, 

 and lye, drives off to the Jordan and 

 seeks relief in the muddy waters of that 

 river. Then, as night rapidly settles in 

 the deepest wrinkle on the face of Mother 

 Earth, the tired traveler rides between 

 the miserable hovels which constitute 

 modern Jericho and dismounts at the Sul- 

 tan's Spring, once sweetened by Elisha. 



Here the water is collected in a large 

 pool, both cold and clear, and few indeed 

 resist the temptation to plunge into it and 

 remove forever any lingering signs of the 

 holy but muddy waters of the Jordan. 



The traveler who is wise will not try 

 to sleep in the hot hotel, whose confining 

 walls seem to radiate discomfort, but will 



