thed in glistening
green. Let us rest for a while in this cool shade and forget the misery
of the blazing noon. Below us lies the gray Jordan valley and the
steel-blue mirror of the Dead Sea; and across that gulf we see the
furrowed mountains of Judea and Samaria, and far to the north the peaks
of Galilee. Around us is the Land of Gilead, a rolling hill-country,
with long ridges and broad summits, a rounded land, a verdurous land, a
land of rich pasturage. There are deep valleys that cut into it and
divide it up. But the main bulk of it is lifted high in the air, and
spread out nobly to the visitations of the wind. And see--far away
there, to the south, across the Wadi Nimrin, a mountainside covered with
wild trees, a real woodland, almost a forest!

Now we must travel on, for it is still a long way to our night-quarters
at Es Salt. We pass several Bedouin camps, the only kind of villages in
this part of the world. The tents of goat's-hair are swarming with
life. A score of ragged Arab boys are playing hockey on the green with
an old donkey's hoof for a ball. They yell with refreshing vigour, just
like universal human boys.

The trail grows steeper and more rocky, ascending apparently impossible
places, and winding perilously along the cliffs above little vineyards
and cultivated fields where men are ploughing. Travel and traffic
increase along this rude path, which is the only highway: evidently we
are coming near to some place of importance.

But where is Es Salt? For nine hours we have been in the saddle, riding
steadily toward that mysterious metropolis of the Belka, the only living
city in the Land of Gilead; and yet there is no trace of it in sight.
Have we missed the trail? The mule-train with our tents and baggage
passed us in the valley while we were sweltering under the hawthorns. It
seems as if it must have vanished into the pastoral wilderness and left
us travelling an endless road to nowhere.

At last we top a rugged ridge and look down upon the solution of the
mystery. Es Salt is a city that can be hid; for it is not set upon a
hill, but tucked away in a valley that curves around three sides of a
rocky eminence, and is sheltered from the view by higher ranges.

Who can tell how this city came here, hidden in this hollow place almost
three thousand feet above the sea? Who was its founder? What was its
ancient name? It is a place without traditions, without antiquities,
without a shrine of any kind; jus