Continuing our journey eastward, we soon find ourselves in a deep and narrow ravine. The floor of this wady, or ravine, is twelve or fifteen feet wide, while its rocky sides lift themselves up very steeply for three or four hundred feet, getting wider and yet wider towards the top. I now turn to my Bible, and find that once upon a time David ruled and reigned in Jerusalem. But Absalom rebelled against his father and drove the King from the city. Fleeing towards Jericho, David passed through this ravine. Then Shimei, one of Absalom’s servants, who was also one of the household of Saul, ran along on the edge of the precipice and cursed David, and rolled great stones down the steep bluff, trying to kill him, saying to him: “Come out, come out, thou bloody man, and thou man of Belial!” [Illustration: AN ARAB HORSEMAN.] Passing on through this historic wady, we come now to where it opens wide its broad arms and forms a splendid valley of a hundred acres or more. “Halt! Halt!” cries one of the guards. “Halt!” Every horse is motionless. Every man is seized with terror. We expect the robbers to attack us at any moment. But we soon dismiss all hope on that line, for we see we are to be deprived of that privilege. Our guards simply want to exhibit to us their splendid feats of horsemanship. And ah me! how graceful they are. Each rider seems a part of his Arab horse. The guards rush at, and fight each other, to show us how skilled they are in this method of warfare, and how impossible it would be for us to resist, or escape from an attacking party of Bedouins. Each horse feels his keeping. He moves like a bundle of steel springs. It seems that he will leave the earth and fly through the air. These superb horses remind us of the beautiful story we have all read in the Arabian Nights, about those splendid Arabian mares that used to prance through the streets of Damascus, until break of day, and “then fly away towards Bagdad on enchanted carpets.” Leaving here, the way is so rough that I can but say to my companions: “Pull off your coats, boys, pull off your coats, and roll up your sleeves, ‘for Jordan am a hard road to trabble.’” No saying was ever more true: _Jordan am a hard road to travel_!