found no language sufficient to express the
astonishment elicited by the view before us; and here it will be safest
only to indicate the salient points of the extensive landscape, without
indulging in the use of epithets vainly striving to portray our feelings.
We were looking over the Ghor, with the Jordan sparkling in the sunshine
upon its winding course below. In direct front was _Nabloos_, lying
between Ebal and Gerizim; while at the same time we could distinguish
Neby Samwil near Jerusalem, the Mount Tabor, Mount Carmel, and part of
the Lebanon all at once! On our own side of Jordan we saw the extensive
remains of _Kala'at Rubbad_, and ruins of a town called _Maisera_. On
such a spot what could we do but lie in the shade of the whitewashed
Weli, under gigantic oak-trees, and gaze and ponder and wish in
silence,--ay, and pray and praise too,--looking back through the vista of
thirty-three centuries to the time of the longing of Moses, the "man of
God," expressed in these words "O Lord God, Thou hast begun to show Thy
servant Thy greatness and Thy mighty hand: . . . I pray Thee let me go
over and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain,
and Lebanon." The honoured leader of His people--the long-tried man
"through good report and evil report," who, during his second forty years
which he spent as a shepherd in Midian, had been accustomed to the
abstemious habits and keen eyesight of the desert; and, at the end of
another forty years as the ruler of a whole nation, living in the desert,
"his eye was not dim,"--added to which natural advantage, we are told
that "the Lord showed him all the land," highly cultivated as it was then
by seven nations greater and mightier than Israel,--Moses must have
beheld a spectacle from Pisgah and Nebo, surpassing even the glories of
this landscape viewed by us from Nebi Osha.

Turning eastwards to our evening home, we passed a ruined site called
_Berga'an_, where we had one more view of the Dead Sea, and traversed
large plains of ripe corn, belonging, of course, to the people of
Es-Salt. The people requested me to pray to God that the locusts might
not come there, since all that harvest was destined for Jerusalem.

We met some of the _'Abbad Kattaleen_ Arabs, but we were safe under the
escort of the Saltiyeh instead of the 'Adwan. These 'Abbad are the
people who assaulted and plundered some seamen of H.M.S. "Spartan" in
1847, on the Jordan; for which offence