"When one travels in Judæa, at first the heart is seized with a great sense of tediousness; but when, as you pass from solitude to solitude, space stretches limitless before your eyes, that feeling gradually wears away, and you experience a secret terror which, far from casting down the soul, gives courage and raises the spirit. Extraordinary views discover on every side a land laboured by miracles: the burning sun, the swooping eagle, the barren fig-tree, all the poetry, all the scenes of the Scriptures are there. Every name contains a mystery; every grotto declares the future; every summit resounds with a prophet's accents. God Himself has spoken on those shores: the dried-up torrents, the cleft rocks, the half-open tombs testify to the working of wonders; the desert appears to be still mute with terror, and it is as though it had not ventured to break the silence since it heard the voice of the Almighty. "We descended from the brow of the mountain, in order to go to spend the night on the shore of the Dead Sea, and next to go up to the Jordan[696]. . . . . . . . . . . "We broke up our camp, and made our way for an hour and a half with excessive difficulty through a fine white dust. We were proceeding towards a small wood of balsam-trees and tamarinds, which I saw to my great astonishment rising from the midst of a sterile soil. Suddenly the Bethlemites stopped and pointed to something which I had not perceived, at the bottom of a ravine. Without being able to say what it was, I caught a glimpse as though of a kind of sand moving over the immobility of the soil. I approached this singular object, and I saw a yellow river which I had some difficulty in distinguishing from the sand of its two banks. It was deeply embanked, and flowed slowly in a thick stream: it was the Jordan.... "The Bethlemites stripped and plunged into the Jordan. I did not dare to follow their lead, because of the fever which still troubled me." [Sidenote: Jerusalem.] We returned to Jerusalem; Julien was not much struck with the sacred places: like a true philosopher, he was dry[697]. I left Jerusalem, arrived at Jaffa, and took ship for Alexandria. From Alexandria I went to Cairo, and I left Julien with M. Drovetti, who had the kindness to charter an Austrian vessel for me for Tunis. Julien continued his journal at Alexandria: "There are Jews here," he says, "who gamble in stocks, as they do wherever they are. Half a league from the city stands Pompey's Column, which is in reddish granite, mounted on a block of hewn stone." MY ITINERARY. "On the 23rd of November, at midday, the wind having become favourable, I went on board the vessel. I embraced M. Drovetti on the shore, and we made mutual promises of friendship and remembrance: I am paying my debt to-day.