This, or something like it, was what the Archaeologist's phrase seemed to promise me as we watched the glowing embers on the hearth of Avalon. And it is this promise that has drawn me, with my three friends, on this April day into the Land of Gilead, riding to Jerash. The grotesque and rickety bridge by which we have crossed the Jordan soon disappears behind us, as we trot along the winding bridle-path through the river-jungle, in the stifling heat. Coming out on the open plain, which rises gently toward the east, we startle great flocks of storks into the air, and they swing away in languid circles, dappling the blaze of morning with their black-tipped wings. Grotesque, ungainly, gothic birds, they do not seem to belong to the Orient, but rather to have drifted hither out of some quaint, familiar fairy tale of the North; and indeed they are only transient visitors here, and will soon be on their way to build their nests on the roofs of German villages and clapper their long, yellow bills over the joy of houses full of little children. The rains of spring have spread a thin bloom of green over the plain. Tender herbs and light grasses partly veil the gray and stony ground. There is a month of scattered feeding for the flocks and herds. Away to the south, where the foot-hills begin to roll up suddenly from the Jordan, we can see a black line of Bedouin tents quivering through the heat. Now the trail divides, and we take the northern fork, turning soon into the open mouth of the Wadi Shaib, a broad, grassy valley between high and treeless hills. The watercourse that winds down the middle of it is dry: nothing but a tumbled bed of gray rocks,--the bare bones of a little river. But as we ascend slowly the flowers increase; wild hollyhocks, and morning-glories, and clumps of blue anchusa, and scarlet adonis, and tall wands of white asphodel. The morning grows hotter and hotter as we plod along. Presently we come up with three mounted Arabs, riding leisurely. Salutations are exchanged with gravity. Then the Arabs whisper something to each other and spur away at a great pace ahead of us--laughing. Why did they laugh? Ah, now we know. For here is a lofty cliff on one side of the valley, hanging over just far enough to make a strip of cool shade at its base, with ferns and deep grass and a glimmer of dripping water. And here our wise Arabs are sitting at their ease to eat their mid-day meal under "the shadow of a great rock in a weary land."