The mean temperature of Jerusalem, only fourteen miles away, is 64° Fahrenheit. It is temperate throughout the year and snow falls there in the winter. The heat here is as great as that of the centre of Nubia. For six months in the year the mean temperature in the Jordan Valley averages 100° Fahrenheit. But this is not the character of the whole course of the Jordan. Let me give you a bird’s-eye view of the river, or, better, let us suppose we have taken an aeroplane and are going from its source in the Lebanon Mountains to where it loses itself in the great sea of salt below here. It rises on the foot of Mount Hermon, whose peak is covered with snow the greater part of the year. It has two or three different sources. One is near Dan, and higher up is another at Banias, near the spot where Christ said: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” It is at Banias that the Jordan has its chief source. It comes from a cave in the limestone rock which is now choked up with stones, but out of which the water flows in a great volume, cold, sweet, and pure. There are trees about the cave and the stream runs through a beautiful park down to Lake Huleh, which is only seven feet above the sea. The spring of Banias has always been noted for its sweetness and purity. It is said the waters and cave were formerly dedicated to the god Pan, and that from him came the name Banias, or Panias. Greek tablets have been found near by, and ruined temples and columns show that the place was once the site of a considerable city. It has now only a mud village of about fifty huts. Flying down to Lake Huleh, we see a marshy catch basin into which run other streams and from which the Jordan flows out. There is little activity about the lake. Near it live a few Bedouins whose only business seems to be making mats of the papyrus reeds growing on the shores. These are the waters of Merom beside which Joshua and his men of war battled with the Canaanites for the Promised Land. A little farther down is the main crossing to Damascus. The place is known as the Bridge of Jacob’s Daughters, and the stream is here on the level of the sea. It drops six hundred and eighty feet in the next nine miles, falling in a series of twenty-seven cascades.