DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12665#0299
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
hausted, and unable any longer to pull an oar.
There he made coffee from the water of the sea ;
and a favourable wind springing up, for the first
time they hoisted their sail, and in a few hours
reached the head of the lake; that, feeeble as he
was, he set off for Jericho, and, in the meantime,
the unhappy Costigan was found by the Arabs on
the shore a dying man, and, by the intercession of
the old woman, carried to Jericho. I ought to
add, that the next time he came to me, like Goose
Gibbie, he had tried whether the money I gave
him was good, and recollected a great many
things he had forgotten before.
The reader cannot feel the same interest in that
sea which I did, and therefore I will not detain
him longer. In three hours, crossing a rich and
fertile country, where flowers were blooming, and
Arab shepherds were pasturing their flocks of
sheep and goats, we had descended the bed of a
ravine, where the Kedron passes from Jerusalem
to the Dead Sea, at the foot of the mountains of
Santa Saba. It was night when we arrived ; and,
groping our way by the uncertain light of the
moon, we arrived at the door of the convent, a
lofty and gigantic structure, rising in stories or ter-
races, one above the other, against the sides of the
mountain, to its very top ; and then crowned with
turrets that, from the base where I stood, seemed,
like the tower at which the wickedness of man was
confounded, striving to reach to heaven.
We " knocked, and it was opened to us;" as-
hausted, and unable any longer to pull an oar.
There he made coffee from the water of the sea ;
and a favourable wind springing up, for the first
time they hoisted their sail, and in a few hours
reached the head of the lake; that, feeeble as he
was, he set off for Jericho, and, in the meantime,
the unhappy Costigan was found by the Arabs on
the shore a dying man, and, by the intercession of
the old woman, carried to Jericho. I ought to
add, that the next time he came to me, like Goose
Gibbie, he had tried whether the money I gave
him was good, and recollected a great many
things he had forgotten before.
The reader cannot feel the same interest in that
sea which I did, and therefore I will not detain
him longer. In three hours, crossing a rich and
fertile country, where flowers were blooming, and
Arab shepherds were pasturing their flocks of
sheep and goats, we had descended the bed of a
ravine, where the Kedron passes from Jerusalem
to the Dead Sea, at the foot of the mountains of
Santa Saba. It was night when we arrived ; and,
groping our way by the uncertain light of the
moon, we arrived at the door of the convent, a
lofty and gigantic structure, rising in stories or ter-
races, one above the other, against the sides of the
mountain, to its very top ; and then crowned with
turrets that, from the base where I stood, seemed,
like the tower at which the wickedness of man was
confounded, striving to reach to heaven.
We " knocked, and it was opened to us;" as-