This rocky wady is like a prison-house to me.  But while eating I hear sweet strains of music somewhere on the mountains—­it is from a shepherd’s pipe.  Scanning the heights I see far above me shepherds with their flocks of sheep and goats, and the music that I hear is from their reed-harps which they play as they lead the way over rugged mountain paths to find greener pastures and better waters.

We tarry here only a little while.  Not long after lunch we pass a grotto of small size in the hill-side.  Evidently the carven ruins are the remains of an ancient temple that stood here in the days when a pagan people held possession of the land; and I feel sure that a fountain must exist here a good part of the year, though now it is dry.

A little farther on is Jabesh-gilead.  The story of Jabesh-gilead is a touching one.  The people of the city were besieged by the Ammonites under their king, Nahash.  The men of the city were willing to make a covenant to serve the Ammonites.  But Nahash told them that the only condition on which he would make a covenant with them would be to thrust out all their right eyes and lay it as a reproach upon Israel.  The elders of Jabesh asked a respite of seven days in which to get help, which request was granted.  The situation was critical in the extreme.  Messengers left the besieged city and hurried to the new king of Israel.  Saul heard the story of their distresses.  Immediately he gathered an army of three hundred and thirty thousand men, and, marching rapidly up the Jordan Valley, crossed the river and attacked the Ammonites and completely routed them with great slaughter.  And thus he saved the city.

The men of Jabesh-gilead never forgot Saul and his kindness to them.  Forty years later the disastrous battle of Gilboa was fought.  In this battle both Saul and Jonathan were slain.  The next day when the Philistines searched for spoils among the dead they found Saul and his three sons, and they cut off his head to carry it as a trophy to Philistia; but they took the headless trunks of the king and his sons to Beth-shan and fastened them against its walls as a terrible warning to the Israelites.  But, “when the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead heard of that which the Philistines had done to Saul, all the valiant men arose and went all night and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Bethshan and came to Jabesh and burnt them there.  And they took their bones and buried them under a tree at Jabesh, and fasted seven days.” (II.  Samuel 31:11-13.)

Off to the left a little way I see Tabakat Fahil, identified as Pella, the place to which the Christians of Jerusalem fled just before the siege of Titus in obedience to the prophetic warning of Christ.

It is two o’clock when we reach the Jordan Valley, at a point a little south of Beth-shan, which is on the west side of the river.  We now turn northward and pursue our way steadily near the mountains until after five o’clock; then we turn toward the river, which we reach at sun-down.