280 
A CRUSADE IN THE EAST. 
ible at a short distance. It was a poor traveler whom the 
robbers had murdered that night. Yusef cut the corpse down, 
as he informed us, and pinned upon it these words, which he 
wrote upon a piece of paper by the light of the moon : “If 
ever Yusef Badra meets the wretches who murdered this 
man, he will cut their heads off and hang them by the heels 
to this tree.” 
On the road leading down into the valley of El Huleh we 
crossed, near Baneas, the chief source of the Jordan. At this 
point it is nothing more than a good spring of clear water, 
enlarged to the size of a rivulet by contributions from several 
smaller springs. It comes from a large cave in the mount¬ 
ain a little beyond Baneas. In an hour and a half, having 
descended a long slope over a bed of rocks, we reached an 
old bridge with three arches, which crosses a stream called 
by the natives the true source of the Jordan. It is a disput¬ 
ed point among biblical writers which of the two is in reality 
entitled to the name, the size being nearly equal; but the 
best authorities seem to concur in giving the distinction to 
the stream nearest to Baneas. Before reaching the bridge 
we passed several fine olive groves, and had a distant view 
of the lake El Huleh, whose bright waters gleamed like a 
sheet of silver in the hollow of the great plain. 
From the bridge we struck out into a marsh, directing our 
course toward the base of Jebel Egil, the range of mountains 
on the right of El Huleh. We soon found that the recent 
heavy rains had flooded all the low grounds, and our horses 
and mules were sometimes scarcely able to extricate them¬ 
selves from the mud. Our baggage was frequently thrown 
off the backs of the mules in their struggles, and recovered 
with great difficulty and delay. We saw waterfowl all 
around us, chiefly cranes, snipe, and such as are common in 
swampy grounds ; and by dint of a great deal of firing, at the 
expense of an immense quantity of powder and shot, acci¬ 
dentally killed two cranes that flew up suddenly within ten 
feet of our sportsmen. In the afternoon we saw for the first 
time a Bedouin village. It consisted of a dozen or fifteen 
low black tents, in the midst of the marsh, with a popula- 
