You know if there is a drop of water or a wet mark on your hand
and you wave it about in the air, presently the water disappears, that
is because of evaporation. The dampness has not really gone but turned
into another form and made the surrounding air a little more damp. If
that drop had been salt, the salt would not have entered into the air,
but stayed on your hand, so when the air drinks up the water from the
surface of the Dead Sea, the salt remains behind and the sea gets more
and more salty; it is many times more salt than the water of an ordinary
sea.

The sandy shores all round are full of this salt and nothing can grow
there, so all is desolate and dreary, and thus it is that the name Dead
Sea is so appropriate. If you tried to swim in that sea you would find
it impossible to sink, for just as sea-water holds you up more than
fresh, so the Dead Sea water holds you up more than that of the ordinary
sea. All the same, though you could not sink to the bottom you might
drown, because the head and chest being heavier than the legs go down
naturally, and a man might not be able to recover himself but be drowned
legs upward, as many have been through not knowing how to manage a
lifebelt.

The sacred river Jordan runs into the Dead Sea. We have met one of the
sacred rivers of history already--the Nile,--and the Jordan, though very
small, is another. It is almost absurdly small in contrast with the
Nile, being only one hundred miles long! From all over the world people
send to get water from the Jordan with which to baptize their babies;
they have a feeling that it is different from ordinary water because
Christ Himself was baptized in it. As you have heard, the Russian
pilgrims go down in crowds to bathe in the Jordan in their shrouds, for
they too look on the river as sacred.

About six miles to the south of where we are sitting is Bethlehem, where
Jesus was born, and where the shepherds and Wise Men found Him. Much
nearer is Bethany, where He often stayed.

To-day something of the wonder of the Holy Land has come upon us. We
have got out of the narrow crowded lanes and away from the jostling
people into the country; so the Bible story has become more real than it
ever was before. Here is the hillside over which He passed. There are
the olive trees, exactly like those He saw.

[Illustration: ABOUT SIX MILES TO THE SOUTH IS BETHLEHEM.]

We have visited Him in His daily life. It is now only left for us to go
to