On the east side of the Jordan stretches a plain, corresponding to the Jericho plain, in which possibly Sodom once stood. Above this, on the south-east, rise the steep cliffs of the Ammonite ranges. On the west there are precipitous hills, 800 feet high, with a narrow beach, and a marl-cliff, or Sidd, below. Here lies the curious ruin of Kumrân, and beneath it is a cane-brake extending to the Feshkhah springs, where the beach is terminated by the promontory of the same name rising sheer from the water, its base surrounded with the huge fallen "fragmentsâ from which the title Feshkhah seems derived. This spot, with the running stream, the broad shallow pool, the cane-brake, and the steep precipice behind, is perhaps the most picturesque on the shore.
There is one other remarkable natural feature in this interesting plain of Jericho which demands attention--the Kelt Valley, running from the spring of that name, and south of Erîha, past Jiljûlieh to Jordan. There seems no doubt that this is the Valley of Achor, in which Achan was stoned; and the bed of the valley is full of boulders and pebbles of every size, which would account for its being chosen as the scene of the execution, as there is hardly a stone in the greater part of the plain round it.
Wâdy Kelt has been also thought to be the Brook Cherith, and the scene seems well fitted for the retreat of the prophet who was fed by the "'Oreb,â whom some suppose to have been Arabs. The whole gorge is wonderfully wild and romantic; it is a deep fissure rent in the mountains, scarcely twenty yards across at the bottom, and full of canes and rank rushes between vertical walls of rock. In its cliffs the caves of early anchorites are hollowed, and the little monastery of St. John of Choseboth is perched above the north bank, under a high, brown precipice. A fine aqueduct from the great spring divides at this latter place into three channels, crossing a magnificent bridge seventy feet high, and running a total distance of three miles and three-quarters, to the place where the gorge debouches into the Jericho plain. On each side the white chalk mountains tower up in fantastic peaks, with long knife-edged ridges, and hundreds of little conical points, with deep torrent-seams between. All is bare and treeless, as at Mar Saba. The wild pigeon makes its nest in the "secret places of the stairsâ of rock; the black grackle suns its golden wings above them; the eagle soars higher still, and over the caves by the deep pools the African kingfisher flutters; the ibex also still haunts the rocks. Even in autumn the murmuring of water is heard beneath, and the stream was one day swelled by a thunderstorm in a quarter of an hour, until it became a raging torrent, in some places eight or ten feet deep.