and mildness that he might have found on the banks of the Nile. All is gone now, as much as the walls of the earlier Jericho, which fell before the rams' horns of the priests in the army of Joshua. Nature only remains — nature and history — for "the past at least is secure," and here, as at the Pyramids, if not "forty," over thirty "centuries look down upon us." On the crest of yonder mountains, we still discern the figure of Moses; while in the valley below, more than a thousand years afterward, was heard "the voice of one crying in the wilderness," and "John came preaching repentance and baptism for the remission of sins": and nearer still, the range at whose very foot we are camped, bears the name of Quarantana, from the belief, once commonly accepted, that it was the mountain of the temptation, where our Lord after His baptism, and before He entered on His ministry, spent forty days of fasting in the wilderness. Thus do the Law and the Gospel look across the plain of the Jordan, as if signalling to each other from the tops of the mountains.
While we were thus musing on the scene, the tents were struck, and the muleteers brought us our horses. Our last ride was not to be a solitary one: for there were two or three parties that had come down from Jerusalem, and camped near us, and we mounted together. Among them was a company of Frenchmen whom we had met at Mount Sinai, and afterwards at Bethlehem, who were so intelligent and courteous that I felt quite sure the young men must be scions of some old Legitimist families, who, under the direction of a chaplain (there was a priest in the company), were strengthening their faith by a visit to the Holy Places of the East. We met them frequently during the Holy Week in Jerusalem, and were confirmed in our impression. They were well mounted and well armed, though they did not omit the precaution
