The autumn rains commenced in 1873 with a great thunderstorm on the 24th of November; and now the face of the country suddenly changed, and the cool, clear, delightful autumn weather set in--most treacherous of all the seasons in Palestine, as the sun then draws out the reeking miasma from the softened ground. The plains became green with tender grass, the great cloud-banks rose behind the hills, and I awoke one morning to hear, to my dismay, the croaking of frogs close to the camp. With the experience of one more year, we should at once have moved to higher ground. We stayed however where we were, and suffered in consequence. The climate of Jericho must have altered greatly since Josephus described the place as “a region fit for gods.” Thrice we visited the Jordan Valley; three times the terrible remittent fever of Jericho threatened valuable lives in our party, and once it proved fatal. The change of climate is due, I imagine, to the decay of cultivation. Herod planted palm-groves, and watered them by aqueducts still remaining. The groves existed in the seventh, and even in the twelfth century; but now only two trees can be found. The Crusaders also undertook cultivation, and made sugar at the ruined mills under Quarantania, still called the “sugar mills.” At the present day the land is quite as productive as ever; but the Arabs disdain agriculture, and the inhabitants of Erîha are so enervated, by the climate, that they bring men down from the hills to reap their scanty crops. Every kind of vegetable will grow here--tomatoes, vegetable marrows, grapes and indigo; yet the beautiful streams of Kelt and of Elisha’s Fountain (’Ain es Sultân) are allowed to run to waste, or to form malarious pools, and thus the unfilled lands in the plain reek with miasma. CHAPTER XIV. THE JORDAN VALLEY. The Jordan Valley is not only the most remarkable feature of Palestine, but one of the most curious places in the world. It has no exact counterpart elsewhere, and the extraordinary phenomenon of clouds sweeping as a thick mist 500 feet below the level of the sea, is one which few European eyes have seen, but which we witnessed in the early storms of the spring of 1874. The Jordan rises as a full-grown river, issuing from the cave at Baniâs, about 1000 feet above the level of the Mediterranean. In the short distance of twelve miles it falls not less than 1000 feet, passing through the papyrus-marshes, and reaching the Huleh Lake. This lake is four miles long, and from its southern extremity to the north end of the Sea of Galilee is ten and a half miles. The second lake has been determined, by our line of levels, as 682 feet below the Mediterranean; thus in twenty-six and a half miles there is a fall of 1682 feet, or more than sixty feet to the mile.