At first, we took the way to the Convent of Mar Saba, following the course of the Brook Kedron down the Wady en-Nar (Valley of Fire).  In half an hour more we reached two large tanks, hewn out under the base of a limestone cliff, and nearly filled with rain.  The surface was covered with a greenish vegetable scum, and three wild and dirty Arabs of the hills were washing themselves in the principal one.  Our Bedouins immediately dismounted and followed their example, and after we had taken some refreshment, we had the satisfaction of filling our water-jug from the same sweet pool.  After this, we left the San Saba road, and mounted the height east of the valley.  From that point, all signs of cultivation and habitation disappeared.  The mountains were grim, bare, and frightfully rugged.  The scanty grass, coaxed into life by the winter rains, was already scorched out of all greenness; some bunches of wild sage, gnaphalium, and other hardy aromatic herbs spotted the yellow soil, and in sheltered places the scarlet poppies burned like coals of fire among the rifts of the gray limestone rock.  Our track kept along the higher ridges and crests of the hills, between the glens and gorges which sank on either hand to a dizzy depth below, and were so steep as to be almost inaccessible.  The region is so scarred, gashed and torn, that no work of man’s hand can save it from perpetual desolation.  It is a wilderness more hopeless than the Desert.  If I were left alone in the midst of it, I should lie down and await death, without thought or hope of rescue.

The character of the day was peculiarly suited to enhance the impression of such scenery.  Though there were no clouds, the sun was invisible:  as far as we could see, beyond the Jordan, and away southward to the mountains of Moab and the cliffs of Engaddi, the whole country was covered as with the smoke of a furnace; and the furious sirocco, that threatened to topple us down the gulfs yawning on either hand, had no coolness on its wings.  The horses were sure-footed, but now and then a gust would come that made them and us strain against it, to avoid being dashed against the rock on one side, or hurled off the brink on the other.  The atmosphere was painfully oppressive, and by and by a dogged silence took possession of our party.  After passing a lofty peak which Francois called Djebel Nuttar, the Mountain of Rain, we came to a large Moslem building, situated on a bleak eminence, overlooking part of the valley of the Jordan.  This is the tomb called Nebbee Moussa by the Arabs, and believed by them to stand upon the spot where Moses died.  We halted at the gate, but no one came to admit us, though my companion thought he saw a man’s head at one of the apertures in the wall.  Arab tradition here is as much at fault as Christian tradition in many other places.  The true Nebo is somewhere in the chain of Pisgah; and though, probably, I saw it, and all see it who go down to the Jordan, yet “no man knoweth its place unto this day.”