and Memphis, a distance sufficient to put them beyond the reach of pursuit, without being inconveniently remote from their native country. Near the site of the former city, at the village of Matarea, there is a remarkable sycamore and well, where the Holy Family are believed to have taken up their temporary abode. We rode out thither one morning from Cairo; and as this venerable tree will not last for ever, there may be a certain degree of interest in preserving a likeness of it (see title-page), since, admitting this to be merely a tradition, it must at least be admitted to be a poetical one. The old tree stands in the midst of a small grove. Its trunk is hollow, and partly rent open, and its huge branches seem ready to fall with mere age. Its bark is much broken off, and its wood mercilessly chipped with the knives of innumerable pilgrims. This hoary patriarch is surrounded by a youthful cortége of fragrant citron and pomegranate-trees, and sundry parasitic plants have interlaced their tendrils with its giant limbs. A few palms stand around, as if to do him honour; and it is the delight of the pigeons and vultures to sway to and fro upon their graceful and elastic fans. From the edge of the grove may be seen, at scarcely a stone's-throw off, the mounds and solitary obelisk of Heliopolis. The adjacent well is called Ain Shems (the Fountain of the Sun), reputed to be the only real spring in the valley of the Nile, from the coolness and freshness of its water, though really supplied, as Wilkinson says, by filtration through the banks of that celebrated river. According to varieties of the story, this spring was miraculously opened to supply the thirst of the wanderers, or, being originally brackish, was sweetened by their miraculous powers. There is a whole group of traditions connected with the Flight in the neighbourhood of Cairo. In Pietro della Valle's time, a house at Matarea was shown as the dwelling-place of Mary; and at the Greek Convent at Old Cairo is another of the Virgin's chambers. The Mahommedans say, that Elizabeth, with her infant John, afterwards the Baptist, also fled into Egypt.

There may be, however, no value in such traditions, except that they seem to point out the neighbourhood in which the Holy Family did really seek refuge from the violence of Herod.

During my stay at Jerusalem I saw but little of Madame Pfeiffer, but on joining some travellers who were about to go down to the Jordan and the Dead Sea,-an excursion which, though short, is both fatiguing and perilous, she proved to be one of the party. At nightfall we reached the extraordinary convent of St. Saba, among the wild deserts of the Jordan, and here I found that, lest the sanctity of the brethren should be compromised, women were never admitted within the walls, a solitary tower without being appointed as their receptacle, and that to this tower she had been conducted. Thither, as in duty

bound, being desirous that she should have all the comforts their somewhat "scant courtesy" allowed, I immediately repaired, accompanied by a lay brother, who was honoured with the appointment of groom of the chamber to lady pilgrims. Stumbling

in the dark over the rocky ground, we reached at length the base of the tower, standing, quite isolated, upon the brink of a tremendous precipice. Here the lay brother, handing me the supperbasket, planted a ladder so as to form a communication with the portal, which was elevated some twenty feet above the ground, and then, ascending, I following literally close at his heels, drew forth a key and unlocked the small heavy door which gave access to this female asylum, or rather prison. The room we entered was empty, and, by another ladder, we ascended to the upper story, which was furnished with some little attention to the bodily comforts, but also to what seemed to be more consulted, the spiritual edification of its gentle inmates. Pictures and images of saints adorned the walls of a small oratory, niched into the side of the apartment, and over which a few lamps cast a dim uncertain gleam, leaving its extremities in gloomy obscurity. Upon a low divan sat the object of our search, with her usual expression of calm and fearless tranquillity. Her simple supper was brought forth, and while she was engaged with it, I asked her whether she did not feel timid at being left in utter solitude. In fact, the dim, dreary look of this upper chamber, the total darkness of the lower one, and the awful stillness of both, were well calculated to act upon a nervous imagination, and to awaken a train of dismal and superstitious fancies. When Captain Basil Hall and his daughters visited the place, the ladies had refused to be thus incarcerated, and stormed away till allowed to enter the convent walls. Not so, however, the German pilgrim; she declared that she never was more comfortable, and refused my offer to remain on guard in the lower story of the tower. Accordingly, we departed, and locked her up snug for the night.

Long before sunrise next morning, we were all, including Madame, mustered before the gate of the convent, and descending from the elevated region of Mar Saba, reached the desolate shores of the Dead Sea before noon, from whence, suffering

176

FORD OF THE JORDAN.

intensely with heat and thirst, we made our way across the desert valley to the verdant banks of the Jordan, which we reached at the bathing-place of the Greek pilgrims. The Latin monks, their rivals in holy places, have another for their followers further up the stream, near to a spot where there exist the ruins of a convent dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and each party strenuously contends for the genuineness of its respective site, as being that where John baptized the people unto repentance, and where Jesus himself submitted to the rite. It is enough to know that the place was near Bethabara, the ford of the Jordan, over against Jericho, and which tradition has pointed out as the place where the children of Israel passed over to the assault of that city. No spot, it must be confessed, could be more suitable or more wildly picturesque, than that where we now took refuge from the insufferable heat of the sun. The river, as was always the case, pours through a sultry desert, but its banks present a sort of double channel, the lower filled at ordinary times, the upper when its waters are periodically swollen, thus creating an oasis of wild and tangled vegetation, a maze of cane brakes. and creepers, with thickets of willow and other trees, amidst which it was easy to picture the figure of the Baptist with his raiment of camel's-hair, and his leathern girdle, dispensing the purifying rite to the trembling and repentant crowd.

When the heat had somewhat subsided, we struck across the desert plain to the village of Rihhah, traditionally regarded by the monks as the site of Jericho, although no ancient remains whatever are to be discovered there. The ruinous Gothic tower, which is the principal building in the place, is, with as good reason, pointed out as the house of Zaccheus, where our Lord rested when passing through the city.

About half an hour from hence we reached the beautiful spring of Ain es Sultan, where we had determined to halt for the night. The copious stream bursting forth from its basin runs down towards Jericho, creating everywhere a rich, but, in the absence

RETURN TO JERUSALEM.

177

of judicious irrigation, useless growth of shrubs, which has replaced the groves of palm-trees, and the exuberant vegetation which marked this neighbourhood as one of the most fertile under heaven. About a mile from our camp, forming the western boundary of the broad plain of the Jordan, arose the precipitous mountain of the "Quarantania," so called, because it is traditionally believed that the forty days and nights of our Lord's sojourn in the wilderness were passed there; while its elevated summit, which commands a view of half Palestine, is fixed on as the spot whence the Tempter showed Jesus "all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory thereof." And whether we are to take an objective or subjective view of the Temptation, it is at least certain that no more suitable spot for retirement from the world could have been selected, than the horrid wilderness of the Dead Sea, with its voiceless ravines and its arid crags, in the caves and clefts of which, particularly here and at Mar Saba, thousands of anchorites once took up their habitation.

I have now briefly summed up all that fairly pertains to my present subject; the traditional localities connected with the life of Jesus in the region of Judæa. The conclusion is obvious -that while we find all the general features of the country still subsisting, and with so little alteration as to add life and reality to the Scripture narrative, the attempt to identify those more minute must evidently be the work of fancy or of fraud.

Next day we returned to Jerusalem, by the road "from Jerusalem to Jericho," where, in the parable of our Lord, the man fell among thieves, and was relieved by the good Samaritan. From this it would appear that the road was then as proverbially insecure, as it is at the present day.

At Jerusalem I lost sight of my earnest and intrepid fellowtraveller, Madame Pfeiffer, who lingered there some time after my departure. I had been surprised at her powers of endurance during a journey which, short as it was, from the heat of the

N