"Thus wore out night; and now the herald lark Left his ground-nest, high towering to descry The morn's approach, and greet her with his song, As lightly from his grassy couch up rose Our Saviour, and found all was but a dream; Fasting he went to sleep, and fasting waked. Up to a hill anon his steps he reared, From whose high top to ken the prospect round, If cottage were in view, sheepcote, or herd; But cottage, herd, or sheepcote, none he saw; Only in a bottom saw a pleasant grove, With chant of tuneful birds resounding loud; Thither he bent his way; determined there To rest at noon, and entered soon the shade High roofed, and walks beneath, and alleys brown, That opened in the midst a woody scene."[123] Leaving the Quarantina with its dreary scenes and solemn recollections, the pilgrim returning from the Jordan finds himself off a beaten path which, since the days of Moses, it is probable has connected the rocks of Salem with the banks of the sacred river. Chateaubriand informs us that it is broad, and in some parts paved; having undergone, as he conjectures, several improvements while the country was in possession of the Romans. On the top of a mountain there is the appearance of a castle, which, we may conclude, was meant to protect and command the road; and at a little distance, in the bottom of a deep gloomy valley is the Place of Blood, called in the Hebrew tongue Abdomim, where once stood a small town belonging to the tribe of Judah, and where the good Samaritan is imagined to have succoured the wounded traveller who had fallen into the hands of thieves. That sombre dell is still entitled to its horrible distinction; it is still the place of blood, of robbery, and of murder; the most dangerous pass for him who undertakes to go down from Jerusalem to Jericho.