And now at length we arrived at the top of the ascent, and spurring along under the stony knoll on which the little village of K[)u]st[)u]l--an ancient "castellumâ of the Roman conquerors--stands, we fully expected to see Jerusalem. Instead of this we saw before us a huge valley over 1000 feet deep, and beyond it a straight line of hills more lofty and barren than those before passed. We could well picture the disappointment, so graphically described by the old chronicler, of the weary hosts of women and children who toiled footsore and thirsty in rear of the Crusading army, faintly asking, as each height was passed and a new view opened, "Is that Jerusalem?â If to us, well mounted and well fed, the journey was wearisome, what was it to the pilgrims harassed by Saracen skirmishers, and afraid to stop and bury those who fell, lest, as one writer says, a man might be found to be but digging his own grave.
A stony winding road led down to the bottom, a stony winding ascent led up on the other side. Around us were mountains of strikingly wild and barren character, with the dark iron-grey rocks tinged in parts with black and russet and capped by a softer white chalk. The long blue shadows, the large rounded outlines, the hardness and ruggedness of the slopes, combined to produce a scene of wild grandeur more striking than anything yet met except the dark thickets of the Sôba ridge.
The valley beneath is full of grey olive-groves; the white torrent bed is sinuous and winds gradually round west. In the hollow, south of its course, the village of 'Ain Kârim stands on an eminence, and close to it the white convent wall, with its dark cypresses, marks the traditional birthplace of John the Baptist.
The valley is a place famous in Jewish history. It commences north of Jerusalem, and leads down past Lifta (Eleph) to a little village called Kolônia which was on the road beneath us. Thence by 'Ain Kârim southwards to join the Bether valley, and by Kesla it runs down to Zoreah and Eshtaol and widens out into the great corn valley of Sorek, and so past Ekron and Jamnia to the sea. Thus it was one of those passes by which the Philistines were able to penetrate into the heart of the Jewish mountains. It was down this valley that Samuel drove the defeated host from Mizpeh, north of Jerusalem, to Ebenezer, a place probably at the entrance of the hills. In their flight they passed under Bethcar, which is not impossibly the present 'Ain Kârim. Along the stony bed of this great valley at our feet, we may picture to ourselves the nomadic hosts with their mail-clad champions flying before the followers of the prophet, while far away on the white hills the tabernacle would be seen high on the ridge of Mizpeh.
