While my dragoman busied himself in getting supper, I sat on a box making notes of what I had seen and experienced that day.  Just then the place served as Kitchen and writing-room.  I wrote rapidly, and as I wrote the thought that somewhere that day I had crossed the path of the Master in his Perean ministry thrilled me.  I said, “Mr. Barakat, I am going down to the Jordan for a while after supper.”  He replied, “All right, and I’ll go with you’.”  “No,” said I, “I want to be alone down at the bridge.”  He simply said, “I’ll go with you.”

Our supper was a light affair, but our host brought a platter of something that looked like dark beeswax, but which proved to be a palatable food called “halawa.”  We ate from the floor of this room, which then became our dining-room.

After supper I was ready to go down to the river, not more than a hundred yards from our lodging-place.  When we started, our host stepped to a corner of the room, picked up a gun, and prepared to go with us.  I told my dragoman to tell him not to go with us.  The reply was, “He will go with us.”  “Well,” I said, “if he must go make him put down that gun; it will spoil my evening of quiet thought at the sacred river.”  The answer was:  “Make no further objection.  Have you not noticed that everybody here carries a gun?  He knows what he is doing.  This is the most disreputable place along the river.  Those Bedouins of the black tents that we passed over yonder would want no better opportunity than to find you, who are expected to have money, alone at the bridge.”  I accepted the situation, and said, “All right, but I shall expect you both to be obedient to the extent of giving me a period of quiet as long as I wish to remain.”

But, before we go to the bridge, let me tell of that night in that miserable place of filth.  At the time of retiring my host said to me through my interpreter that I could have choice of beds—­that I could either sleep on the counter, which consisted of a couple of boards laid carelessly across boxes, or that I could sleep behind the counter on the floor!  After looking at the boards, and thinking what would likely be the result should I attempt to sleep there, I made choice of the floor.  The room then became my bedroom.

Oh, that night!  I did not sleep a half-hour.  The place seemed alive with vermin.  My host slept on the counter.  He did not seem to be annoyed in the least.  True, he scratched, but he snored an accompaniment to his scratching throughout the night.  I could only scratch and listen to him; there was no snoring for me.  After that night it required frequent bathing and much searching for a week or ten days before I felt free from the awful pests of that filthy den.  Thus it was that my first crossing of the Jordan did not bring me to a “land of rest,” but to an experience akin to distraction.