The Lady openly exulted in the lack of accessible game, and grudged even the occasional shots fired, as disturbing to the smaller creatures in which she found delight—the grakle, the blackbird with orange under wings with whom we had already made friends by the brook Cherith, whose bell-like note sounded from tree to tree, the dainty sun-bird, _cinnyris oseæ_, whose metallic sheen flashed in and out of the tamarisk-trees, the delicate—hued Moabite sparrow, the aristocrat of his family, who ran up reeds and tree trunks like the familiar tits at home. We were too early to see the flights of birds of passage on their way south to warmer climes, and which, before and after the winter months, pause in the thickets of the Jordan basin, and fill the air with music, which includes the notes of the cuckoo and the nightingale, and recalls, however irrelevantly, Browning's "Oh, to be in England, now that April's here!" We had hoped to see the busy little jerboa, a jumping mouse with long hind legs, like a microscopic kangaroo, but circumstances were, for the present, against us, chiefly the noise of our cavalcade. He is a friendly little beast, and easily tamed, and though familiar with him in confinement we should have liked to see him under happier conditions.
We could not have happened on a more unfortunate season for flowers; the wonderful flora of the Jordan valley was now at rest, and even the autumn squills, the delicate muscari, and a few lingering silenae had been left behind on the higher ground the other side of Jericho. The only feast of colour was the oleander, familiar to most of us as a greenhouse shrub, and which here rose with its rich crimson or pure white flowers, single or double, wherever a little water remained to keep the earth moist about its roots. We speculated as to what might be its nearest cousin in our northern latitudes, and the wildest guesses were made, including the rhododendron, mezereum, daphne, and syringa, but no one thought of the familiar periwinkle, with its shining trails and sapphire blooms, in habit and appearance so utterly dissimilar, but which also belongs to the family of _apocynacea_, or dog-bane. In spite of its rich colouring and welcome beauty, the oleander bush is highly poisonous, affecting even the water in which it grows. A story is told of some French soldiers in the Peninsular War who utilised some of its twigs to serve as spits for roasting meat, with the result that seven out of twelve who ate of it shortly died.