LEAVING the sterile desolate shores of the Dead Sea, we ride in a north-westerly direction over a plain encrusted with salt and sulphur, through a morass overgrown by a jungle of reeds and rushes, and then enter upon the plain of the Jordan. The soil is cumbered with clumps of _nubk_, its thorns sharp as prongs of steel, and thickets of _Zizyphus Spina Christi_, from which tradition says that the crown of thorns was made. The _osher_ or apple of Sodom, its flowers resembling those of the potato, its fruit green or yellow, attracts the eye by its deceitful beauty. Innumerable pools and rills of water, fed by the perennial fountains which spring up near the site of the ancient Jericho, nourish this rank and unprofitable vegetation. The climate is semitropical, in consequence of the deep depression of this part of the Jordan valley below the sea level. “Well watered” and with such a climate, the district once was and might still be, an Eden of fertility and beauty.[101] Now its only settled inhabitants are a few wild and lawless, squalid and poverty-stricken Arabs. [Illustration: ER RIHA, NEAR JERICHO.] Turning eastward, we soon reach the FORDS OF THE JORDAN, the traditional site of our Lord’s baptism and the present bathing place of the pilgrims. The river comes down from the Sea of Galilee in a turbid impetuous stream. It has cut its channel so deeply in the marly soil, that throughout the greater part of its course it is hidden from view. From any elevated point, however, it is easy to trace its course, from the fringe of bright green which marks it. Innumerable willows, oleanders, and tamarisks grow upon its banks and overhang the river-bed. Hence the incident recorded of the sons of the prophets, who, in the days of Elisha, went down to the Jordan to cut timber, one of whom let the head of a borrowed axe fall into the river.[102] [Illustration: PLAIN OF THE JORDAN NEAR JERICHO.] As we contrast this muddy, turbulent torrent, rushing unprofitably along its deep cut channel, with the clear bright waters of Damascus, which spread fertility and prosperity wherever they come, it is easy to understand the scornful words of Naaman the Syrian: “Are not Abana and Pharpar rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?... So he turned and went away in a rage.”[103] [Illustration: ARABS IN PLAIN OF JERICHO.]