Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

by Lew Wallace




to THE WIFE OF MY YOUTH who still abides with me




BOOK FIRST




CHAPTER I



The Jebel es Zubleh is a mountain fifty miles and more in length,
and so narrow that its tracery on the map gives it a likeness to
a caterpillar crawling from the south to the north. Standing on
its red-and-white cliffs, and looking off under the path of the
rising sun, one sees only the Desert of Arabia, where the east
winds, so hateful to vinegrowers of Jericho, have kept their
playgrounds since the beginning. Its feet are well covered by
sands tossed from the Euphrates, there to lie, for the mountain
is a wall to the pasture-lands of Moab and Ammon on the west--lands