CHAPTER XXIV.
GOING UP TO JERUSALEM.
It was our last night in tents before reaching Jerusalem, and we were to mount but for one more ride. We could not miss such an opportunity to see the sun rise over the mountains of Moab, and were up long before daybreak, watching the approach of the dawn. The weather, which had been propitious through all our journeying on the desert, favored us to the end. The sun came up without a cloud, and shone down into the plain of the Jordan and the Dead Sea. Looking out upon the landscape in this morning light, one could see how it was that this natural basin once supported a large population, and became the seat of one of the great cities of the East. The valley of the Jordan at this point is eight miles broad — a breadth as great as that of the valley of the Nile above Cairo; and here on its western border rose a city of such splendor that after the Roman conquest Antony did not think it an unworthy gift to offer to Cleopatra, who in turn sold it to Herod, then governor of Judea. However little claim Herod may have had to the title of "Great" (although Augustus recognized him as "the second man in the Empire," inferior only to himself), he had at least one Imperial taste — that for architecture, as he showed in the rebuilding of the Temple. Jericho furnished him a Winter retreat when he fled from the cold heights of Jerusalem; and here he built a palace, where he could take refuge, and find under his palms the Summer warmth
