A RUINED KHAN.-MOUNTAINS OF MOAB.
referred to myself, I mounted the white charger, and led off through St. Stephen's Gate upon the Bethany road. At a short distance beyond the village we noticed the old paved road to Jericho, and halted for a short time at a fountain covered with a lofty arch of rough masonry. After pursuing our way for an hour or two down the rugged ravine which forms the road, we turned to the left, and ascended into the desolate and blackened mountains of the "Wilderness of Judea," the scene of John the Baptist's ministration, and of our Lord's temptation. Of all places in the world, it is naturally fittest for the centre and kingdom of Satan the destroyer; for, as Maundrell says, "it is a most miserable, dry, barren place, consisting of high, rocky mountains, so torn and disordered as if the earth had suffered some great convulsion, in which its very bowels had been turned outward." This fearful wilderness, not ten miles east of Jerusalem, has always been the abode of violence and misery. The very road on which we passed was the scene of our Lord's parable of the Good Samaritan.
About half way between Jerusalem and Jericho we passed the crumbling walls of a large khan, with immense cisterns. Following the rugged road, often through avenues cut in the rock, we came, by about two o'clock, to the eastern edge of the wilderness which overlooks the plain of Jericho, clad in deep green verdure, caused by the fertilizing streams of the Fountain of Elisha. Beyond it, deep in the valley, and as yet invisible, flowed the Jordan, while the view beyond was closed by the dark masses of the mountains of Moab, inviting the eye of the pilgrim to select Nebo and Pisgah. I paused on the brow of the mountain, near the well-preserved remains of a Roman aqueduct, which