We walked slowly along over the smooth gaily colored little pebbles to the spot, half a mile beyond, where the car was waiting. But we turned to look back again and again. The great silent sea held for us the awful fascination of _death_.
There was a road of a sort across the plain to the Jordan. When the river is in flood this plain is covered inches deep with ooze, rank vegetable growths spring up, the brown bushes are green, clouds of mosquitoes, scorpions, vipers and all manner of crawling things make their home here for a season; but now there were only long cracks that crossed and recrossed in the dried mud. Twice our wheels spun round in pockets of soft gray clay, but small thick boards, a spade and dry sand helped us out. A turn and we could see the river!
To one who has never studied the geography of Palestine or to whom books of travel are strangers, that first sight of the Jordan must bring far greater disappointment than to one in a way prepared for the dark, muddy stream whose swift current hurries on ceaselessly, gathering silt as it goes. Within its normal banks it is such a narrow stream! We stopped for a moment in the house where sweet Turkish coffee and oranges were served us and where the boats used by fishermen and by tourists who like to row across to touch the land of Moab lay moored to a tiny wharf. The banks were steep here and soft willows bent over them. We sat down in the little boat that swung lazily at its moorings. It seemed the strangest and the most wonderful of rivers, this little muddy stream! Over it the great hosts of Israel passed; along its banks John, coming out of the desert, preached the kingdom of heaven to the multitude; and here came even Jesus Himself to be baptized in the waters His presence made sacred. We dipped our bottles carefully into the stream and filled them with water as all pilgrims do. We listened to the stories of the feast days when pilgrims come down to the river to worship there; we read the story of Naaman and understood why the proud leper of the king’s court, even at the command of the stern prophet, hesitated to bathe in its waters. We lived in another day. Proud armies marched over the plain toward Jericho and we could almost hear Joshua’s ringing commands. We were brought back to our own day suddenly by the sound of a voice, a very American voice, singing in the distance, “Roll, Jordan, Roll.” We looked at each other in amazement. After a moment’s silence the voice rang out again, nearer now: