For half an hour our path lay through a jungle of thorny shrubs, beyond which was an open plain. The day was glorious; the air balmy; the sun shone through a gauze-like haze; the leafy songsters, from their sylvan coverts along the streamlets, “caroled the melody of their song.” Our horses were fleet, our spirits buoyant, and over that noble plain we rode with unbounded delight. Both in kind and richness the soil varied as we advanced. Now it was barren and covered with a thin, smooth, nitrous crust, through which we sank as in ashes; again it was rich, bearing groves of fruit-trees, tufts of the feathery tamarisk, and beautiful oleanders, with their finger-like leaves and tulip-shaped flowers. At ten A.M. we reached the first terrace, or highest bank of the Jordan, composed of irregular hills of clay, and measuring twenty feet deep. Here our soldiers sallied forth, plunging into the dense thickets and sweeping like lightning around the hills to discover the robbers and save us from surprise. In fifteen minutes more we had descended to the second terrace, and five minutes thereafter we stood on the banks of the most sacred and renowned river in the world. Other rivers are deeper, broader, longer, but the Jordan is unsurpassed in the peculiarities of its source, the sinuosities of its channel, the glories of its history. Springing from the heart of anti-Libanus, ten crystal fountains pour their eternal waters into its descending current. From the base of snow-capped Hermon three noble fountains send their united contributions southward, feeding the River Hasbâny. Situated forty miles to the north from the head of Lake Tiberias, the first is the Fountain Fuarr, at Hasbeîya, and is the remotest perennial source of the Jordan; the second is called Sareid, located south of Kefr Shubah; the third is Luisany, near El-Ghujar. Eighteen miles to the south from Hasbeîya is the largest permanent fountain in the world, known as El-Leddân. Its pure waters gush forth from the foot of the green hill of El-Kâdy, and, after forming a pool, they flow southward in a broad stream, increased in its course by many rills creeping from beneath noble oaks, and at length it joins the Hasbâny seven miles north of Lake Merom. Four miles to the east from El-Kâdy is the Fountain of Banias, next in size to that of El-Leddân, but which, unlike the latter, originates in many rivulets, which, uniting, rush on to a confluence with the Leddân, and, a mile below the junction, join the Hasbâny. Farther to the south the fountains of Derdara, Ruahiny, and those of Belât, Blâta, and El-Mellâhah, unite with the same stream, which, after flowing southward for six miles over the lovely Plain of Hûleh, spreads out into Lake Merom, on whose shores Joshua achieved his final triumph over the banded kings of Canaan.[279] Four and a half miles in length and three and a half in breadth, this gem of the lakes is the first gathering together of the waters of the Jordan from their