open plain on the west. Here we catch our
first clear view of Mount Hermon, with its mantle of glistening snow,
hanging like a cloud on the northern horizon, ninety miles away, beyond
the Lake of Galilee and the Waters of Merom; a vision of distance and
coolness and grandeur.

The fields, watered by the full streams descending from the Wadi Farah,
are green with wheat and barley. Along our path are balsam-trees and
thorny jujubes, from whose branches we pluck the sweet, insipid fruit as
we ride beneath them. Herds of cattle are pasturing on the plain, and
long rows of black Bedouin tents are stretched at the foot of the
mountains. We cross a dozen murmuring watercourses embowered in the
dark, glistening foliage of the oleanders glowing with great soft flames
of rosy bloom.

At the Serai on the hill which watches over this Jiftlik, or domain of
the Sultan, there are some Turkish soldiers saddling their horses for an
expedition; perhaps to collect taxes or to chase robbers. The peasants
are returning, by the paths among the cornfields, to their huts. The
lines of camp-fires begin to gleam from the transient Bedouin villages.
Our white tents are pitched in a flowery meadow, beside a low-voiced
stream, and as we fall asleep the night air is trembling with the
shrill, innumerable _brek-ek-ek-coax-coax_ of the frog chorus.

II

MOUNT EPHRAIM AND JACOB'S WELL

Samaria is a mountain land, but its characteristic features, as
distinguished from Judea, are the easiness of approach through open
gateways among the hills, and the fertility of the broad vales and level
plains which lie between them. The Kingdom of Israel, in its brief
season of prosperity, was richer, more luxurious, and weaker than the
Kingdom of Judah. The poet Isaiah touched the keynote of the northern
kingdom when he sang of "the crown of pride of the drunkards of
Ephraim," and "the fading flower of his glorious beauty which is on the
head of the fat valley." (Isaiah xxviii: 1-6.)

We turn aside from the open but roundabout way of the well-tilled Wadi
Farah and take a shorter, steeper path toward Shechem, through a deep,
narrow mountain gorge. The day is hot and hazy, for the Sherkiyeh is
blowing from the desert across the Jordan Valley: the breath of
Jehovah's displeasure with His people, "a dry wind of the high places
of the wilderness toward the daughter of my people, neither to fan nor
to cleanse."

At times the walls of rock come so close together