Elisama, “is the boundary of Judah.” Helon, unable to speak, threw himself on the sacred earth, kissed it and watered it with his tears, and Sallu, letting go the bridles of the camels, did the same. Elisama stood beside them, and as he stretched his arms over them, and in the name of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, blessed their going out and their coming in, his eyes too overflowed with tears, and his heart seemed to warm again, as with the renewal of a youthful love. See, he exclaimed, The winter is past, the rain is over and gone, The flowers appear on the earth; The time of the singing of birds is come, The voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The figtree putteth forth her green figs, The vines give fragrance from their blossoms.—Cant. ii. 10. They proceeded slowly on their way; Helon gazed around him on every side, and thought he had never seen so lovely a spring. The latter rains had ceased, and had given a quickening freshness to the breezes from the hills, such as he had never known in the Delta. The narcissus and the hyacinth, the blossoms of the apricot and peach, shed their last fragrance around. The groves of terebinth, the oliveyards and vineyards stood before them in their living green: the corn, swollen by the rain, was ripening fast for the harvest, and the fields of barley were already yellow. The wide meadows, covered with grass for the cattle, the alternation of hill and valley, the rocks hewn out in terraces, and filled with earth and planted, offered a constant variety of delightful views. You might see that this was a land, the dew of which Jehovah had blessed, in which the prayer of Isaac over Jacob had been fulfilled, when the patriarch said, “God give thee of the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine.”[79] Helon drank of the pure, clear mountain stream, whose sparkling reflection seemed to him like a smile from a parent’s eyes on a returning wanderer, and thought the sweet water of the Nile, so praised by the Egyptians, could bear no comparison with it. Elisama reminded him of the words of the psalm: “Thou lookest down upon our land and waterest it, And makest it full of sheaves. The river of God is full of water. Thou preparest corn and tillest the land, Thou waterest its furrows and softenest its clods; Thou moistenest it with showers, thou blessest its springing, Thou crownest the year with thy blessing, And thy footsteps drop fatness. They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness, And the hills are encompassed with rejoicing: The pastures are clothed with flocks, And the fields are covered with corn: All shout for joy and sing.”—Ps. lxv. Footnote 79: Gen. xxvii. 28. Helon replied to him from another psalm: