We pass over these mountains from east to west, and then from the heights we look down to a valley which runs north and south, the deepest in all the world, where we can see a little river with many windings, and rapids and falls, rolling onward to drop at last into a blue lake in the south. This river, as you know, is the Jordan, crossed by the Israelites when they first came to this land; the river where Naaman washed away his leprosy, where Elijah struck the waves with his mantle and parted them, and in whose water Jesus was baptized. We journey across this Jordan valley, from ten to twenty miles wide, and then we climb again high and steep mountains. This region is called the Eastern Table Land, because the mountains gradually sink down to a great desert plain on the east. Here we see the ruins of once great cities, where now only a few wandering Arabs pitch their tents. We have now crossed the land of Palestine, and we have found that it contains five parts lying in a line: first, the Sea Coast Plain; second, the Shephelah, or foothills; third, the Mountain Region; fourth, the Jordan valley; and fifth, the Eastern Table Land. But we must keep in mind that the land when Jesus lived there was very different from the land as we see it. Now it is a poor land; then it was rich. Now its villages are made of miserable mud-houses, where live people who look half starved; then it was a land of well-built towns and happy people. Now we find roads that are mere tracks over the stones; then there were good roads everywhere. Now the hills rise bare and rocky; then they were covered with gardens. Now scarcely a tree can be seen in miles of travel; then the olive and the vine and the palm grew everywhere. We see the land in its ruin; Jesus saw it in its riches. [Illustration: The valley of Gehenna, to the east of Jerusalem] The People in the Lord's Land CHAPTER 2 NEARLY ALL the people living in Palestine in the time of Jesus were of the Jewish race. Two thousand years before Jesus came, a great man was living in that land, named Abraham. To this man, God gave a promise that his children and their children after them for many ages should live in that land and own it. Abraham's son was named Isaac, and Isaac's son was named Jacob. All the people of Palestine had sprung from the family of Jacob, and by the time Jesus came, these descendants of Jacob, as they were called, were in number many millions, and were to be found in other lands besides Palestine; although more of them lived in Palestine than in any other land.