Armed with a letter under the sultan's great seal, Sir John went to Jerusalem, and was admitted to all the holy shrines from which Christians and Jews were usually excluded. He saw, or believed he saw, the spots sanctified by almost all the great events narrated in the Gospel; and though his credulity, as may be inferred from what we have already seen of his narrative, often got the better of his judgment, his piety, at any rate, deserves our genuine respect. We pass over his legends of this holy city, some of them poetical, some merely grotesque, and some really sanctioned by the general voice of the church, and go with him eastward to the valley of Jordan and the Dead Sea. Of this mysterious body of water he mentions that it casts out every day "a thing that is called asphalt in pieces as large as a horse," and neither man, nor beast, nor any thing that hath life may die in that sea, which hath been proved many times by the experiment of criminals condemned to death who have been left therein three or four days, and yet taken out alive. If any man cast iron therein, it will float; but a feather will sink to the bottom; "and these things," truly remarks Sir John, "are contrary to nature." Not more so, perhaps, than an incident of which he speaks at the city of Tiberias. In that city an unbeliever hurled a burning dart at our Lord, "and the head smote into the earth, and waxed green, and it grew to a great tree; and it grows still, and the bark thereof is all like coals." Then, near Damascus there is a church, and behind the altar, in the wall, "a table of black wood on which was formerly painted an image of our Lady which turns into flesh; but now the image appears but little." As a compensation, however, for its loss, a certain wonderful oil, as Sir John assures us, drops continually from the wood and heals many kinds of sickness, and if any one keep it cleanly for a year, after that year it turns to flesh and blood. In this same region of marvels he tells us of a river which runs only on Saturday, and stands still all the rest of the week, and another which freezes wonderfully fast every night, and is clear of ice in the morning. These rivers are not known nowadays, or at any rate must have changed their habits.