View of Jericho
If Christ crossed the Jordan opposite Jericho he must have approached the Judean mountains near the scene given above. We have here another and more general view of the fine aqueduct before illustrated. This view was taken on the 25th of April, 1894. We had just descended the Judean mountains and were about entering Jericho when we were arrested by the sight of this specimen of perfect masonry in the midst of the old landscape of the Jordan valley. We are here looking toward the east. The mountains in the distance are the mountains of Moab. On the western side of the Jordan the road from Jerusalem to Jericho becomes a true via dolorosa as the traveler descends between the walls of rock that grow higher, ravines that become frightful, and narrow passes that are less passable as he proceeds. Here for two thousand years or more travelers and pilgrims have been set upon, robbed and murdered by the dark banditti that seem as far from civilization now as in the days of Ishmael. Ancient Jericho lay by the springs at the foot of the hill Karantel. Since the day it fell before the faith of the Israelites it has been an easy prey to many conquerors. During the Roman period Antony presented the district to Cleopatra, who afterwards sold it to Herod, who built a palace among its wonderful gardens and made it his winter residence. The climate is semi-tropical. Jericho was not only “the city of palm trees,” but a garden of rare plants and trees. Modern Jericho is a collection of low hovels—forty or fifty—inhabited by a degenerate class. There is a small Greek church here and a tower dating from the fifteenth century, marking, as it is claimed, the house of Zaccheus.
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