“Mounted as variously as those who had preceded them, many of the women and children were suspended in baskets or confined in cages; and, with their eyes strained toward the river, heedless of all intervening obstacles, they hurried eagerly forward, and dismounting in haste and disrobing with precipitation, rushed down the bank and threw themselves into the stream. Each one plunged himself, or was dipped by another, three times, below the surface, in honor of the Trinity; and then filled a bottle, or some other utensil, from the river. The bathing-dress of many of the pilgrims was a white gown with a black cross upon it. “In an hour they began to disappear; and in less time than three hours the trodden surface of the lately crowded bank reflected no human shadow. The pageant disappeared as rapidly as it had approached, and left to us once more the silence and the solitude of the wilderness. It was like a dream. An immense crowd of human beings, said to be 8,000, but I thought not so many, had passed and re-passed before our tents, and left not a vestige behind them.” These pilgrims come in such haste and confusion that frequently some of their number are drowned. And yet so great is the fanatical enthusiasm of the crowd that little or no concern is awakened by the ill-timed death of the unfortunates. The usual bathing-dress is a long, loose-flowing, white gown. After bathing, the pilgrims carefully fold up these robes, thus consecrated, and carry them home with them to far-distant lands, in different parts of the world, and use them as burial-shrouds. I have never seen a better place for bathing and swimming. From the west side one wades down into the river, getting deeper and deeper the farther he goes from the bank. When about half way across, the water becomes too deep for wading, and close to the eastern bank it is so deep that one can hardly dive to the bottom. One finds water any depth from two to twelve feet. The bottom, being composed of sand and smooth rock, is all that could be desired. We are so delighted to be here that we hardly know how to leave. We remain, day after day, reading, fishing, swimming. We catch several messes of sweet, fresh fish, and fry and eat them on the banks of the stream. Having spoken somewhat at length about that place in the Jordan where it is supposed, with reasonable certainty, the Savior was baptized, and which is also the bathing-place of the pilgrims, I now proceed to describe the river from one end to the other. But, before speaking of the river proper, I desire to say something concerning the Ghor, or _valley_, of the Jordan.