myself, and I had been endeavouring to persuade Smith to accompany
me; but he positively refused. He would bathe, he said, neither in
the Dead Sea nor in the river Jordan. He did not like bathing, and
preferred to do his washing in his own room. Of course I had
nothing further to say, and begged that, under these circumstances,
he would take charge of my purse and pistols while I was in the
water. This he agreed to do; but even in this he was strange and
almost uncivil. I was to bathe from the farthest point of a little
island, into which there was a rough causeway from the land made of
stones and broken pieces of wood, and I exhorted him to go with me
thither; but he insisted on remaining with his horse on the mainland
at some little distance from the island. He did not feel inclined
to go down to the water's edge, he said.

I confess that at this moment I almost suspected that he was going
to play me foul, and I hesitated. He saw in an instant what was
passing through my mind. "You had better take your pistol and money
with you; they will be quite safe on your clothes." But to have
kept the things now would have shown suspicion too plainly, and as I
could not bring myself to do that, I gave them up. I have sometimes
thought that I was a fool to do so.

I went away by myself to the end of the island, and then I did
bathe. It is impossible to conceive anything more desolate than the
appearance of the place. The land shelves very gradually away to
the water, and the whole margin, to the breadth of some twenty or
thirty feet, is strewn with the debris of rushes, bits of timber,
and old white withered reeds. Whence these bits of timber have come
it seems difficult to say. The appearance is as though the water
had receded and left them there. I have heard it said that there is