The Jorddnl 
659 
urvcultivated ; if the former, it is cover¬ 
ed tvith crops of various kinds, vineyards, 
villages, and catt'e; if the latter, it pre¬ 
sents herbage and woods. It is watered 
by a river, this river has windings in its 
course ; and the hills wliich bound this 
valley jiave themselves undulations which 
form a prospect agreeable to the eye. 
Here nothing of the kind is to be.found. 
Figure to yourself two long chains of 
mountains running in a parallel direc¬ 
tion from north to south, without breaks 
and without undulations. The eastern 
chain, called the mountains of Arabia, is 
the highest; when seen at the distance 
of eight or ten leagues, you would take 
it to be a prodigious perpendicular wall 
perfectly resembling Jura in its form and 
azure color. Not one summit, not the 
smallest peak can be distinguished ; you 
merely perceive slight inflections here 
and there, as if the hand of the painter 
who drew tliis horizontal line along the 
Ssky, had trembled in some places. 
The western range belongs to the 
mountains of Judea. Less lofty and 
moie unequal than the eastern chain, it 
ditfers from the other in its nature also ; 
it exhibits heaps of chalk and sand, 
whose form bears some rer-emblance to 
piles of arms, waving standards, or the 
tents of a camp seated on the border of 
a plain. On the Arabian side, on the 
contrary, nothing is to be seen but black 
perpendicular rocks, which throw tlieir 
lengthened shadow over the waters of 
tlie Dead Sea. The smallest bird of 
heaven w-ould not find among these rocks 
a blade of grass for its sustenance ; every 
thing there announces the country of a 
reprobate people, and seems to breathe 
the horror and ir.cest whence sprung 
Ammon and Moab. 
The valley, bounded by these two 
chains of mountains, displays a soil re¬ 
sembling the bottom of a sea that has 
long retired from its bed, a beach cover¬ 
ed with salt, dry mud, and moving sands, 
furrowed, as it were, by the waves. Here 
and there stunted shrubs with difficulty 
vegetate upon this inanimate tract; their 
leaves are covered with salt, which has 
nourished them, and their bark has a 
smoky smell and taste. Instead of vil¬ 
lages you perceive the ruins of a few 
towers. Through the middle of this 
valley flows a discolored river, which re¬ 
luctantly creeps towards the pestilential 
lake by which it is engulplied. Its 
course amidst the sands can be distin¬ 
guished only by the willows and the reeds 
that border it; and the Arab in 
No. 
bush among these reeds to attack th© 
traveller, ami to plunder the pilgrim. 
Such is the scene famous for the bene- 
dictions and the curses of Heaven. Thiss 
river is the Jordan ; this lake is the Dead 
Sea; it appears brilliant, but the guilty 
cities entombed in its bosom seem to 
have poisoned its waters. Its solitary 
abysses cannot afford nourishment to any 
living creature; never did vessel cut its 
waves; its ihores are u ithout birds, with* 
out trees, without verdure; and its wa¬ 
ters excessively bitter, and so heavy, 
that the most impetuous winds can 
scarcely ruffle their surface. 
When you travel in Judea, the heart 
is at first filled with profound disgust; 
but, when passing from solitude to soli¬ 
tude, boundless space opens before you„ 
this disgust wears ofV by degrees, and 
you feel a secret awe, which, so far fronx 
depressing tlie soul, imparts life, and ele¬ 
vates the genius. Extraordinary appear¬ 
ances every-wbere proclaim a land teem¬ 
ing with miracles : the burning sun, the 
towering eagle, the barren fig-tree, all 
the poetry, all the pictures of Scripture, 
are here. Every name commemorates a 
mystery ; every grot proclaims the future, 
every hill re-echoes the accents of a pro¬ 
phet. God himself has spoken in thesa 
regions ; dried up rivers, riven rocks„ 
half-open sepulchres, attest the prodigy : 
the desert still appears mute witli terror, 
and you would imagine that it had never 
presumed to interrupt the silence since it 
heard the awful voice of the Eternal. 
. THE JORDAN. 
I passed two whole hours in strolling 
on the banks of the Dead Sea in spite of 
my Betbleheipites, who urged me to leave 
this dangerous country. I was desirous 
of seeing the Jordan at the place where 
it discharges itself into the lake ; an es¬ 
sential point which Hasselquist alone has 
hitherto explored; but the Arabs re¬ 
fused to conduct me to it, because the 
river near its mouth turns off to the left 
and approaches the mountains of Arabia, 
I w'as therefore obliged to make up my 
mind to proceed to the curve of tlie river 
that was nearest to us. We broke up 
our camp, and advanced for an hour and 
a half, with excessive ditficuky, over a 
fine white sand. We were approaching 
a grove of balm-trees and tamarinds, 
which, to my great astonishment, I per¬ 
ceived in the midst of this steril tract. 
The Arabs all at once stopped, and point¬ 
ed to something that I had not yet re- 
inatked at the bottom of a ravine, 
. d F Unable 
