Fifteen miles to the north from the Plain of Masada is the Fountain of the Kid. This beautiful spring is four hundred feet up the mountain side. Bursting from a limestone rock, and rushing down over precipitous rocks, and amid acacias and flowers, it fertilizes a small plain extending to the beach, and cultivated by the Bedouins of the Ghôr. Near this fountain David was secreted when pursued by Saul, and in a cave near by he “cut off the skirt of Saul’s robe privily.”[317] Up this pass the children of Ammon ascended to attack Jerusalem in the days of Jehoshaphat.[318] Originally celebrated for its vines and aromatic plants, Solomon compares his beloved to a “cluster of camphire[319] in the vineyards of Engedi.”[320] Around this fountain now grow the “apples of Sodom.” The fruit grows in clusters upon a tree fifteen feet high and two in girth, is of a yellow color, and has such a blooming appearance as to tempt the traveler’s appetite; but, on being pressed, it explodes like a puff-ball, leaving in the hand nothing but the rind and a few dry fibres.
On the summit of an adjacent hill are the ruins of Maon, the residence of the churlish Nabal and his beautiful wife Abigail, and a mile to the north is the large fountain where this “son of Belial” held his annual feast, to whom David sent his famishing troops to ask permission to enjoy the festival as a reward for services which he had previously rendered to the ungrateful Nabal.[321]
The shrill call of the Bedouin sheikh roused me from my reverie as I sat on the small island in the sea recalling the past and receiving imperishable impressions of the changeless features of the “Vale of Siddim.” That night we were to sleep with the monks of Mâr Sâba, and the journey thither was long, toilsome, and dangerous. Filling a can with seawater, and gathering mineral specimens from the beach, we mounted. The path lay across an undulating plain to the right of Ain Jehâir, whose brackish waters nourish a thicket of canes and a few pale flowers. Ascending the rugged pass of Nukb el-Kuneiterah, one skirted for an hour the verge of a yawning ravine, the precipitous sides of which were as dangerous as the view below was grand and awful. Reaching in less than two hours the summit of the highest ridge, the Wilderness of Engedi lay before us, and through openings in the distant cliffs we caught farewell glimpses of the Dead Sea. Passing an encampment where the children were nude and the women unveiled, we were glad to drink of Arab _leben_, or soured milk, a beverage similar to that which Jael gave Sisera,[322] which was brought to us in a goatskin bottle.