great Mount Hermon--towering high above the valley. This is the loftiest
peak of the Anti-Lebanon, and is 10,000 feet above the sea. The next
morning, we rode for three hours before reaching the second spring of the
Jordan, at a place which François called Tell el-Kadi, but which did not
at all answer with the description given me by Dr. Robinson, at Jerusalem.
The upper part of the broad valley, whence the Jordan draws his waters, is
flat, moist, and but little cultivated. There are immense herds of sheep,
goats, and buffaloes wandering over it. The people are a dark Arab tribe,
and live in tents and miserable clay huts. Where the valley begins to
slope upward towards the hills, they plant wheat, barley, and lentils. The
soil is the fattest brown loam, and the harvests are wonderfully rich. I
saw many tracts of wheat, from half a mile to a mile in extent, which
would average forty bushels to the acre. Yet the ground is never manured,
and the Arab plough scratches up but a few inches of the surface. What a
paradise might be made of this country, were it in better hands!

The second spring is not quite so large as Ain el-Mellaha but, like it,
pours out a strong stream from a single source The pool was filled with
women, washing the heavy fleeces of their sheep, and beating the dirt out
of their striped camel's hair abas with long poles. We left it, and
entered on a slope of stony ground, forming the head of the valley. The
view extended southward, to the mountains closing the northern cove of the
Sea of Galilee. It was a grand, rich landscape--so rich that its
desolation seems forced and unnatural. High on the summit of a mountain to
the west, the ruins of a large Crusader fortress looked down upon us. The
soil, which slowly climbs upward through a long valley between Lebanon and
Anti-Lebanon, is cut with deep ravines. The path is very difficult to
find; and while we were riding forward at random, looking in all
directions for our baggage mules, we started up a beautiful gazelle. At
last, about noon, hot, hungry, and thirsty, we reached a swift stream,