he had given his final blessing to Eleazar the priest, to Joshua the warrior, “Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord; and he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor; but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.”[291] A tomb so vast was worthy of the worldwide influence of his life, and the Mountains of Moab are the appropriate monument of a character so pure and a name so great. The tradition that identifies this ford as the place where the Israelites crossed the Jordan is supported by the clear and simple statement that they “passed over right against Jericho.”[292] The crossing, however, could not have been confined to this limited space. Here probably the priests crossed, while the multitude sought a passage at every feasible point between the city of Adam, thirty miles to the north, and the Dead Sea, five miles to the south. To facilitate the crossing, this long section of the river-bed became dry, which was necessitated both by the millions of people to cross, and also by the impassableness of many portions of the banks. The rendezvous was opposite Jericho, and as the swarming millions came up the western bank, they turned northward and southward toward a common centre. Bearing the ark of the covenant, the priests led the van, and as their feet touched the water, “the waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city of Adam, that is, beside Zaretan; and those that came down toward the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, failed and were cut off, and the people passed over right against Jericho.”[293] Unlike the dividing of the Red Sea, this was the cutting off or damming up of the waters on the north; and the miracle is the more wonderful, as at that time the river was more than ordinarily full. The incidental allusion that the “Jordan overfloweth all his banks all the time of harvest”[294] is equally true at the present day. In the tropical climate of the Jordan Valley the harvest is many weeks earlier than on the mountains 1300 feet above it. Barley harvest occurring here in the middle of March and wheat harvest about three weeks later, it is evident that the allusion refers to the harvest-time of the Jericho plain. At this time of year the Jordan annually rises to the fullness of its banks, and not unfrequently overflows them; and, though occurring in the dry season of the year, the rise is owing to the melting snows on Mount Hermon, and also to the heavy winter rains, which, having previously fallen on the Hermon range, and by March having percolated the sides of the mountains, begin to swell the springs within them, which, being the sources of the Jordan, then commence and for weeks continue to pour an increased volume into the river channel, permitting the traveler of to-day to behold the filling up and overflowing of the sacred river as it overflowed all its banks three thousand years ago.