DESCENT TO THE VALLEY OF THE JORDAN. 
The View is taken from the highway leading from Jerusalem through Jericho, and 
forming a part of the road, or system of roads, by which Jerusalem was connected 
with the countries on the Euphrates, and thence with Persia and India. The pass 
is singularly difficult, and still inherits its evil name as a place of robbers. In this 
scene of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, no stranger ventures without an escort. 
But its variety and boldness strongly attract the eye. “ The view,” says the Artist, 
“when we emerged from the rocky hills, was one not to be forgotten. The Valley 
of the Jordan lay stretched beneath our feet, in all the beauty of an Eastern evening. 
The Dead Sea, the silvery line of the rapid Jordan just visible, the gay colours of 
the pilgrim encampment glittering in the last rays of the setting sun, were fitter for 
the poet than the painter. The pencil must fail to realise it. On the whole line of 
road were Arab and Bedouin lancers.” 1 
Lamartine describes the journey, beginning from Bethany, as singularly toilsome 
and melancholy. Neither houses nor cultivation, mountains without a shrub, immense 
rocks split by time, and pinnacles tinged with colours like those of an extinguished volcano. 
“From the summit of these hills, as far as the eye can reach, we see only black 
chains, conical or broken peaks, a boundless labyrinth of passes rent through the 
mountains, and those ravines lying in perfect and perpetual stillness, without a stream, 
without a wild animal, without even a flower; the reliques of a convulsed land, 
with waves of stone.” He had still another ridge to cross, and on passing it the 
escort fired their muskets in token of joy. 2 
A large portion of the Valley of the Jordan has been from the earliest time 
almost a desert. 3 But in the northern part of the Glior, the great number of rivulets 
which descend from the mountains on both sides produce in many places a luxuriant 
growth of wild herbage. 4 So, too, in the southern part, where similar rivulets exist, 
as around Jericho, there is even an exuberant fertility; but those rivulets seldom 
reach the Jordan, and have no effect on the middle of the Glior. The mountains on 
each side are rugged and desolate; the western cliffs overhanging the Valley at an 
elevation of 1000 or 1200 feet, while the eastern mountains fall back in ranges of 
from 2000 to 2500. 
But the Valley of the Jordan, wild as it is, comes honoured and hallowed to the 
heart by events of the noblest historical and religious memory. As the great barrier 
to Palestine, here was the miraculous passage of the Israelites, and the wondrous baptism 
of Israel. On this scene, too, was that second similar purification of the people 
1 Roberts’s Journal. 
3 Josephus, B. J. vii. 10. 
2 Travels in the East. 
4 Jerom. Com. in Zech. xi. 9. 
