Three o'clock, however, duly arrived, all too soon, and by four o'clock we had breakfasted and were on our way across the sandy plain which stretches for about two hours between Jericho and the Jordan. A few faint streaks in the east promised the coming day, but it was still so dark that our horses required all our attention, as the plain is full of holes; twice over a silver gleam ahead warned us of fords to be crossed, and from time to time dark masses rose up before us, and those riding in advance called to the others to avoid the spreading branches of the jujube-tree, _zizyphus lotus_ and _zizyphus spina Christi_, called by the Arabs _nebk_ and _sidr_, which are the octopods of vegetable life, sending out long tentacles armed with fierce thorns, capable of subtracting your head-gear, entering your saddle, and imprisoning your horse.
The ride across the plain of Jordan, interesting at any time to persons of imagination, was unspeakably weird and suggestive in the morning twilight, but we differed as to whether the world in which we found ourselves was one in course of construction or of disintegration. Some of us were of opinion that the giant sand-hills—a labyrinth of marl and salt deposit, worn by winds and washed by winter torrents, an old sea bottom—which crumble at a touch, and which resemble castles, churches, towers, domes, minarets, whole towns of every variety of architecture, suggested an artist's dream of a world to be; while others maintained that they were the images, in the mind of a philosopher, dwelling upon the past. There was no limit to the tricks which fancy might play in such surroundings, a nearer _fata morgana_; a dream materialised as it created itself; a poem precipitated as it was sung: castles in Spain in which each of us saw some reminder of his personal aspirations: the land of By-and-by; the ruins of Yesterday; the house of Never, according to our individual temperament and faculty.
Riding was not very rapid during the first hour and more, so that it was nearly seven o'clock when we reached the Jordan bridge—the Rubicon between Palestine and Moab, an exceedingly rickety wooden structure, of which the only effective part is the door at either end, designed for the enforcement of backsheesh. The river is embowered in trees, a variety of willow known as the _safsaf_, various acacias, the _farnesiana_, not yet filling the air with its delicious scent, the _tortilis_, and _seyal_—with the long spines, which are found even on many plants innocent as lambs elsewhere, but fully armed in this land of thorns and thistles—the _zakkum_, resembling a large box-tree, also provided with strong thorns, the inevitable jujube _zizyphus_, the crimson-flowered oleander, which is as seldom out of blossom as is the gorse on our English moors, above all, the Jordan tamarisk, inseparable in one's memory from this river and its surroundings, green, graceful, and, in comparison with its many-armed and aggressive neighbours, gentle and friendly.