We had passed over hill and dale through a highly-cultivated country, full of vineyards and gardens and orchards, full of sweet little villages and beautiful rural villas. This did not last long, and we turned in a south-easterly direction. The villages disappeared; the houses became more sparse and humble; the trees became more stunted and bare; the rocks larger and the road more difficult. At the point where the highway leads down the steep hills toward Jericho and the plain of the Jordan, my guide turned suddenly due south into a rough, barren and wild country, where there was no road at all. The sounds of life faded behind us. Vegetation almost wholly disappeared. No animals were to be seen but a few goats far away browsing among the rocks. The birds seemed to refuse to accompany us further. The silence of the desert fell gradually upon us. This was the wilderness of Judea. We were winding downward to the Salt Sea, that great watery waste, in whose silent deeps Sodom and Gomorrah lie buried; on whose shores stand bleak and desolate mountains full of sulphur springs; the gloom without the glory of nature; the home of wild beasts and lepers and robbers and demons; mountains fearful in their nakedness and solitude; evil genii guarding in stern silence the eternal sleep of the lost cities of the plain. I grew uneasy and melancholy as we approached these famous and dangerous places. The taciturnity of my guide, together with an increasing shadow on his expressive face, magnified my apprehensions almost into fears. I felt my boyish weakness and inexperience by the side of this strong, rough, silent man of the wilderness, who now seemed to my excited imagination to have got into his native element, and to be a part of the lonely and supernatural region into which we had entered. Our attention was suddenly drawn to a neighboring eminence by sounds of so strange a character, that it was impossible to say whether they were animal or human. Four lepers appeared in sight, almost naked, holding up their long, withered arms, and screeching out from their hoarse throats and swollen lips their hideous cry, “Unclean! unclean!” I trembled at this sad spectacle and gazed intently, expecting and afraid to recognize my poor father in the group. My guide suddenly laid his hand upon my shoulder, and we both stood still. He then set the basket upon the ground, made signals to the lepers to approach, and drew me away from the spot. A horrible chorus of guttural thanks came up from the leprous creatures, who awaited our departure before pouncing upon the acceptable present. “Oh, sir!” said I, resisting my guide, and forgetting that he was deaf and dumb, “you have given my father’s food to those unhappy wretches! Where is my father? Oh, take me to him!” He stopped and looked me full in the face.