University of Virginia Library

12. XII.

As Onias had desired, that I should without
delay set forth on my journey to Machæ
rus, I should have departed on the morning of
the first day of the week, but that some other
cares detained me, and, especially, the necessity
I felt to be upon me to keep my promise to the
poor Leper, whom I was to visit at his own
home. Wherefore, instead of immediately making
for Machærus, I turned first towards Beth-Harem
to seek out the dwelling of the beggar.
From his account of its place, it was easily
found near to the inn bearing the sign of the
High Priest painted upon its front. Just beyond
it, stood a shapeless mass of extensive
ruins, whose broken roofs and crumbling walls
kept out neither the heats of summer nor the
rains and cold of winter — this was pointed out
to me as the abode of the wretched outcast.

The rooms immediately upon the street I
found unoccupied, but as I penetrated farther
into the gloomy recesses, and then paused to
consider which way I should turn, — it was the

sixth hour, — I was arrested by the voice of one
as if in prayer. I stood still, and heard with
distinctness the voice of a girl, as it seemed to
me, rehearsing, as if from memory, a Psalm
of David, where he deplores and confesses his
sins, and cries out from the great deeps of his
distress, for pity and pardon. The voice
having ceased, the tones of another, which I
at once remembered as those of the leper, fell
on my ear; “Now, my child, that thou hast repeated
those words of the good king and prophet,
let me hear thy voice in prayer also;” with
which request the daughter complying, I heard
the same low and sorrowful voice lifted up in
prayer to God. Yet, though the voice was as
of one who was burdened, the themes on
which it dwelt, were such as to inspire cheerfulness
and gratitude, rather than sorrow or
repining. Many blessings were enumerated
that had been bestowed upon them who were
ready to perish, by the good providence of God,
and by the hands of those who had been
moved to take pity on them. When the worship
was over, I moved from where I had stood,
and advancing toward the door of the inner
room, passed it, and stood before them.

It was a pitiful, yet pleasing spectacle that
presented itself. The beggar was seated in a
corner of the room, upon a pile of clean straw

or rushes, leaning against the wall, with face
upturned as if to catch the light that streamed
in from a single window, or crevice in the wall,
while at his side, also crouched upon the straw,
sat her whose voice I had heard, and who had
already taken in her hands withes, which, with
nimble fingers, she was weaving into baskets.
Some jars and coarse pottery, with a few rude
seats, were the only objects in the room. The
daughter looked up at my approach, but without
surprise, as if accustomed to the intrusion
of visitors through the open doors and fissures.
The voice of the old man, as his ear caught
my footstep, was first heard, “Who comes here,
my child?”

“A stranger,” she replied.

“Not wholly a stranger,” I answered. “It
was I, who yesterday, doubting the truth of
your word, promised to see where you dwelt.”

“It is not much,” replied the old man, “to
say you are welcome to such a place as this;
but I am glad to hear your voice again. It
was far better to hear your voice yesterday,
than the clatter of the brass which the Pharisee
showered upon me, which but for you I could
never have found. My child had left me for a
space, and I alone could not have gathered it
up; besides, that others would have snatched
it from me. It was the same man who a little

after caused me to be driven away by the servants
of the synagogue, with reproaches and
blows, as a Sabbath breaker. But if I broke
the Sabbath by begging, he broke it as well
by giving.”

“He could not resist the fine occasion,” I
answered, “of making a show of his benevolence.”

“That was it, I am sure,” answered the
daughter, “though I would not say so of any
whom we did not well know. But that Pharisee
is known to be very rich, and yet exacting
towards all who are dependent on him, casting
into prison such as owe him but a few
pence. Surely the heart of such a one is not
right.”

“And then,” said the father, “afterwards
showing his zeal for the Sabbath day by setting
the servants of the synagogue to drive me
away. I knew well that it was held unlawful
by many to give on the Sabbath; but I thought
within myself, there would be out of the great
crowds I heard would be gathered together,
some who would think, that, to give an alms
would be as acceptable an offering, as to stand
within and pray.”

“Surely it must be so,” said the daughter,
“the Sabbath is kept, and God is worshipped by

doing good, as well as by saying prayers, and
reading the law. Is it not, Sir?”

“I think so indeed. The law but requires
us to rest on the Sabbath, and not profane it.
It is men who add the observances of which
you complain. But why,” I asked, “do you
beg?” addressing the daughter, “is not your
labor sufficient for your honest support?”

“Oh no, Sir; it brings us but very little,
hardly enough to supply our food, besides
which we must pay for our portion of this crazy
tenement. But the people of Beth-Harem are
kind to us, lepers though we be. Yet would
they avoid us, doubtless, had they not known
us in our better days. You need not fear anything,
Sir, because I tell you my father is a
leper. The physicians say that he will suffer
no more, and that no one now will receive it
from him.”

I said that I feared it not; and asked how it
was, that while her father had suffered so much
she had herself escaped?

“Verily,” cried the father, “through the
good providence of God, — by a miracle of his
loving kindness. But beside her, all are lost,
all.”

I then inquired how so great a calamity had
overtaken them.

“I will tell you,” replied the cripple. “My

birth place is this very Beth-Harem. But
when I became of age, and had chosen what
employment I would follow, my father gave to
me and a younger brother so much of his fortune
as he could part with, and we departed for
Tyre, that we might traffic there as merchants;
for we both preferred that way of life to any
other. There we prospered for many years.
We each took a wife, and our children grew up
around us. But my brother, not content with
the measure of our good fortune, which was
already more than that of any merchant in
Tyre, being given also to excess in his manner
of living, resolved to travel into India, and even
China, for the sake of the great riches which
many had found there, and which he was sure
he should find also. But, alas! he had been
gone but a brief space of time, when I discovered
that in ways, which I had not suspected,
he had wasted a great part of our substance by
debts he had contracted, and soon in addition
to these, instead of wealth flowing in from the
East, I was also obliged to use what was left,
in payment for losses he had incurred there,
partly through error, and partly through riotous
living. Thus was the prosperity of the morning
of our life already over. But this we
might have borne, and from it recovered, had
not a greater and unlooked for calamity ensued.
When for a long time we had had no tidings of
my brother, we were roused at midnight by the
cry of the servants, that he had returned. It
was he in truth; and we received him, as one
whom, though he had greatly erred, we still
loved. We embraced him with affection, and
tried to surpass each other in offices of friendship,
in which we were the more ready, as he
said that by reason of the fatigue of the way
he had fallen ill. But when the morning came,
what was our horror, to behold him white with
the leprosy! The plague could not be stayed.
It was in the state which is most dangerous to
those who approach it, and seized both our
households, the old and the young. We were
before beggars; now we were lepers also. All
fled from us. My wife and my children died,
their limbs dropping off one after another.
This one alone being spared, upon whom,
through the good providence of God, the disease
never laid its loathsome touch. My brother,
the author of all our miseries yet lives; and
his wretched family with him, as if to add to
his unhappiness by the continual reproaches
their sufferings utter. And truly doth he deserve
all he endures. My lot is happy, compared
with his, in that those whom I loved
died, and so escaped what the rest endure; and
this blessed child, who alone lives, was too
pure for the foul curse to come near her. My
hope, by night and by day, is, that I may soon
perish, and release her from this cruel bondage.
It were a sin to pray for death, but I may hope
it.”

The girl wept bitterly, as her father said
these things.

It seemed to be indeed as he had said, that
there was somewhat too pure in her for disease
to harm her; for notwithstanding the extremity
of their poverty, there was none of its loathsomeness
about her; but though poor, her
garments were clean, as was the straw on
which she sat, and her countenance was bright
with the hues of health.

I asked concerning his brother, and whether
he too was in Beth-Harem.

“No,” he answered, “he separated himself
from all whom he had known, and departed
for the desert. He inhabits a solitary dwelling
on the burning sands, where the Jordan leads
toward the salt sea, dependent upon the mercies
of the passing traveller, the shepherd and the
hunter, — who, as they pass, will throw them a
little food, — and upon what fish they can sometimes
catch in the river. But of this they must
be deprived as, one after another, their members
become diseased and perish.”

I said, that I thought it strange, that having

been born in Beth-Harem, and being well
known, there were not more who were prompt
to aid him, and diminish farther the evils of his
lot.

He said that he had not long been returned
to Beth-Harem, and but few of the inhabitants
knew he was there. “But,” he added, “so
great is their horror of this plague, that they
would not approach me; and it must be added
also, that they accuse me of the faults of my
brother, and visit the punishment upon my
head, as well as his, who alone was guilty.”

Then bestowing upon them such relief as
would amply supply their present wants, I departed,
assuring them I should see them again,
when I should have returned from my journey.

Hastening back again to the dwelling of Onias,
I passed the remainder of the day in making
such preparations as were needful for the road,
and for an absence of many days. To Ziba I
could entrust the chief part of these cares. I
did not fail to relate to Judith all I had learned
of the Leper and his daughter, and to raise such
an interest for them in her heart, as to engage
her active exertions in their behalf. Though
professing, and really feeling, all the horror
which any do of the disease of leprosy, and
like all of this people believing it infectious in

all stages of its progress, she yet promised that
by some means which she would trust her ingenuity
to devise, she would contribute of her
abundance to their comfort.

When the morning of the second day had
come, I set forth, with Ziba as my companion,
for the region of the Dead Sea. The cooler
weather that announces the approach of winter
beginning to prevail, our preparations were different
from those which were to be made when
we took our departure from Cæsarea. But
though the winter is near at hand, occasionally
there happen days of little less burning heat
than in the summer months; in the night, the
cold, with heavy dews, always returning. The
forests still retain their leaves, though their verdure
is partly gone. Our way lay in a plain
course in the direction of the river, by following
which, without turning either to the right
or left, we could not fail to arrive at our destined
haven, inasmuch as the city and fortress
of Machærus are visible at the point where the
Jordan empties into the sea. We might have
made our path shorter, by striking across the
plain where the Jordan bends, as it doth below
where the Heshbon joins it, far to the West;
but for the sake of the greater pleasantness of
the road, we kept on the lower banks of the
river. We wound along, therefore, among

many villages, and cultivated grounds, without
interruption, until, in the neighborhood of Jericho
the land loses its fertility, and stretches out
on every side, a wide and barren desert of rock
and sand.

But after leaving Beth-Harem, we entered
upon this fertile tract I have spoken of,
lying first immediately upon the borders of the
stream, and then stretching toward the east,
till, after not many leagues, it meets the mountains,
which, running from north to south,
form a wall, as it were, between Judea and the
farther east. Of those mountains, the nearer
were the hills of Gilead, partly bare, rocky, and
torn by the descending torrents of the early
spring; partly covered with the same forests
and verdure, that clothed the plains at their
roots. The walls and towers of frequent villages,
breaking through the dark foliage, with
their white lines, gave a new beauty to the
scene. I cannot but be of the opinion, that
neither in the neighborhood of Rome or Naples,
nor on the plains of the Po, is there anything
more rare or beautiful to be seen, than
that which here lay before me; which must be
taken as high commendation, seeing that my
prejudices are still (in spite of my present
choice) in favor of the earlier scenes of my
youth. Ziba was clear that these plains were

no way inferior to those of Esdraelon. Crossing
the Heshbon on a bridge of Roman structure,
from which we could just discern the pinnacles
of Heshbon itself, we soon came to Bethabara, a
village not large but agreeably situated, not far
from Jordan, and shaded by surrounding groves
of palms, poplars, and sycamore. Passing
through it, we discovered that very soon we
must enter upon the sands of the desert; for,
from a rising ground, which we were obliged to
ascend, we beheld the cultivated lands gradually
yielding to rock and barren fields; all signs
of verdure being confined to the thickets of
willow and olive, that, until within a few miles
of the Dead Sea, continue to line the banks of
the river. Rising high on the eastern side of
the prospect, we beheld the tops of Mount Pisgah,
and the Mountains of Nebo, and farther in the
same direction, and towards the south, the bleak
and glistening summits of the hills of Arabia.

It was when the sun had reached his highest
point, and his rays were falling upon us, almost
with the power of the summer solstice, that we
entered upon the wild and savage region, blasted
by the hand of God himself because of the
sins of its inhabitants, which extends from the
neighborhood of Jericho on either side of the
river, even unto the further extremity of the
sea. The plains of this desert, which lie

elevated far above the Jordan, present to the
eye only one unvaried scene of desolation;
being composed of whitish rocks just breaking
through the parched earth, or of moving sands,
or else of soil seamed with cracks and fissures,
occasioned by long droughts, and also by
sudden and violent torrents from the mountains
in the season of the rains, which wear
their way by a thousand channels to the
river. When entered upon this dismal region,
the river, though but at a small distance from
us, was no longer visible, nor even the thickets
which clothe its banks, nor would one believe
that they so much as had any existence, so
far were they sunk below the level of this arid
tract. All we could see, therefore, was but a wide
prospect of shining sand, painful for the eye to
look upon, bounded in the dim and hazy distance
by lofty precipices of rock. But, new to
me, it possessed its own charms, as doth everything
that the hand of God has made — the
wild and the terrible, as well as the calm and
the beautiful. Nay, the awe of his presence is
a more sensible influence among such scenes as
these; since as there is no other being whom
he permits to dwell there, no other to divert our
thoughts, we imagine him to make it his peculiar
abode, and think of him alone. Where
men dwell together, in thick and prosperous communities,
and we behold on every side the forms
of human art, or else nature wholly altered by
that art, and thrown into shapes which his mind
has conceived, then we are ever prone to rest in
the nearest and feeblest cause of what we see,
to think more of the changes which man has
wrought in what was brought ready prepared
to his hand, than of the awful power that effected
the first creation, and called into being the
first substance. The scenes of nature wild and
untenanted, even as they came from the hand
of their Maker, are of most power on the mind.
Thus too the ocean moves the soul more than
the land.

We had approached toward the midway point
of this desert region, having seen of living
things, only here and there in the distance
the form of an Arab horseman, or the long neck
of a camel moving among the rocks, when we
beheld what appeared to be a cluster of ruinous
dwellings, whose walls of white stone shone
in the hot glances of the sun with a dazzling radiance.
No tree or shrub was near to break the
rays of the sun; they stood undefended and,
as we supposed, uninhabited in their fearful
solitude. Ziba, thinking they might with
reason be the resort of plunderers and robbers,
who greatly infest the roads lying between
Jerusalem, Jericho, and the borders of the Dead

Sea, counselled that we should avoid them, by
taking a course nearer the Jordan. But curiosity
prevailing over apprehension, we kept on
our way, and with the less concern, that
they stood on what must be the common road
which travellers would take, on their journeys
to Machærus, or Herodium. When we had drawn
so near as to see the buildings more distinctly,
with their white walls, and dark shadows cast
on the burning sand, and had paused a moment,
there suddenly rushed from out the ruins lean
and half-starved dogs, who filled the air with
their prolonged and doleful howling. Fit guardians
they seemed of the foul spirits that could
alone inhabit dwellings more fearful and dismal
than the tombs themselves. The dogs continuing
their savage yells, yet, as they struck us,
rather melancholy and mournful in their sound
than fierce, we kept on our way, and drew still
nearer, though it was with difficulty we urged on
our horses, who seemed to dread an approach,
even more than ourselves. The walls showed here
and there small loop-holes, or windows, but the
eye could see nothing but the deep blackness of
space within. As I looked steadily at one of
these openings, a human face suddenly appeared,
and was as quickly withdrawn; but, seen
only for a moment, it made known by its scaly,
death-like whiteness, who and what the inhabitants
were. Here, I could not doubt, dwelt
the leprous household of the brother of the
Beth-Harem beggar. I called upon Ziba, who
was hastening forward, to stop. At the same
moment passing a projecting wall, I there beheld
the members of this miserable family, lying
basking in the rays of the sun, rather like swine
than creatures in the human form. The dogs
ceased their baying, and came round fawning as
if for food. Soon as the lepers — lying as it
were half asleep — were conscious of our presence
they cried out as with one accord, in
hoarse and unnatural tones,

“Food — food — give us food,” — at the
same time stretching out their hands, from
which some or all the fingers had fallen.

“Food — give us food, else may the curse of
leprosy cleave to you — may the air that blows
over us taint you with the plague a thousand
leagues over the desert.”

“Cease to curse,” said I “and we will throw
you food. But do you not fear to blaspheme,
seeing what the punishment of your sins is?”

This they received with hoarse laughter.

“What should we fear? What is worse
than this? Out upon you, hypocrite! Throw
us food, or begone.”

“I would ask you,” I began —

“Insult us not; ask nothing; — throw us
food, I say, and begone.”

He who had said these things — his face, at
first, white with its leprous crusts, but now
bloated, and red with impotent rage — while he
spoke, had half raised himself from the sand.
He now seized a broken fragment of the wall
to hurl at us; the others at the same time,
crying out to the dogs to attack us. Struck
with horror at such a spectacle, we threw down
the food we could spare, and fled upon our way
— their curses, and the baying of the famished
dogs dying gradually away as we rode.

It was a long while ere I could so banish
from my mind the scene I had witnessed, as
to take note of the way. We rode along in
silence. I could think only of the miserable
fate that had overtaken a household reared once
in prosperity and luxury. How low they must
have fallen, I thought, in their sense of God
and right, while yet the day of their prosperity
shone bright, for adversity to plunge
them so deep in beastliness and impiety. Their
leprosy seemed but the least portion of the evil
that had overtaken them. Their bodies were
in health and beauty, compared with their souls.

“Doubtless they had forsaken God long before
he suffered the punishment of their errors finally
to fall upon them.” So judged Ziba.

“Those wretches,” continued he, “must
have sinned with industry even from their birth,
to bring down so fearful a judgment.”

I told him what I had heard from the leper
in Beth-Harem, and who I supposed them to
be.

At this Ziba recollected himself, and said,
that “doubtless it was as I supposed. He had
heard at Tyre of what I had related; and as
he had been told, it was rare that wickedness
and impiety proceed to such excesses as
in the younger of the two brothers. There
were few in Tyre whom he had not injured.
The wealth of the poor, of the widow, and the
orphan he had obtained as a trust, and then devoted
to his pleasures, and the luxurious indulgence
of his household. His children grew
up in sin. When he returned from India, he
was well aware that when he entered his own
doors, it was as a leper; but his heart was so
hardened, that he said, They shall perish also.
They did perish, indeed, by this living death.
And the curse that had fallen from the hand
of God, clave unto him also, and cleaveth
yet and will cleave forever; for his soul is
leprous more than the body, and that shall be
in the resurrection even as it is now. Shall
it not?”

I said that I could not but think so.

“Yet,” said Ziba, “the Priests will tell
us, that the children of Abraham shall be saved,
and their sins shall not hinder — while no
others shall, be they never so pure.”

“But others,” I replied, “do not so judge.
And these perhaps may know the truth as well
as they.”

“I believe it,” answered Ziba. “The best
that I have heard of the Prophet on the Jordan
— the Baptizer — is, that to the boasting Pharisees
and Doctors from Jerusalem, who think
whether they fulfil all rightenousness or not,
they shall be saved, he said, `It is of no worth,
your claim on Abraham as your father, for God
can raise up at any moment from the very
stones of the street children to Abraham, who
shall come in and claim all that belonged to
his true descendants.”'

“If he has said so,” I answered, “he has
said a good thing, and doubtless true as the
righteousness of God.”

So conversing we continued on our way until,
as we ascended a little knoll of sand, Ziba
cried out, saying, —

“Behold! the Dead Sea!”

I looked where he pointed, and it was plainly
to be seen stretching away to the south till
lost in the extreme distance.

“And there, on the left at the head of the

lake,” continued Ziba, “can the eye just discern
the high rocks on which stand the city and
fortress we are in search of.”

They were indeed just visible. But as we
moved on at a quicker pace, they rapidly
emerged from the dimness in which they first
appeared, and began to assume their proper
forms. The same scene continued to surround
us, save that the whole plain of the desert began
to slope toward the huge basin of the sea, and
the sand to become more light and soft, and the
low rocks to disappear. We now, too, had
brought into sight the great highways from
Idumea, winding round the head of the lake,
and those from the northern parts of the Peræa,
all leading to Machærus, which, since its restoration
by Herod the Great, has been not only
a post of defence and repository for munitions
of war, but likewise a place of resort for the
merchants who trade between Arabia, Jerusalem,
and Tyre, and the general coast of the Mediterranean.
Along these main channels of communication
we could now see horsemen, travellers
on foot, and long lines of loaded camels,
either bent towards Machærus or Herodium,
or else, going from these cities towards the
west and north.

The Dead Sea now opened before me in all
its grandeur and boundless extent. While the

shore at the northern extremity, where the Jordan
sends in its there dull and muddy stream,
is but a vast waste of sand, all flat and low,
even to the water's edge, the eastern and western
shores are on the other hand, bold and sublime,
with mountains of every wild and jagged
form running down to the shore itself in lofty
and abrupt precipices of bare and shattered
rock, then retreating into the interior and rising
into loftier summits still. Between these ranges
of hills lay the mysterious sea, heavy and motionless,
as if indeed dead. No ripple broke its surface,
no wave murmured along the shore — weltering
only among the loose rocks piled along its
margin. The silence as of death rested over it.
The waters of this inland ocean, heavy with
salt, their surface covered with an oily film
which impedes the action of the winds, and
being moreover without tides strike the eye
at once as different from all others — from
those of the Great Sea always in motion by
reason of its tides, and from those of other
lakes which fresh and light are curled by the
gentlest breath of air that passes over them. Had
this sea, instead of water, presented to the eye
a surface of white polished silver, where every
object on its sides was reflected with the perfection
of reality, it would not have differed
from what I saw, nor filled the mind with more
astonishment. When we drew near, and impatient
of delay, attempted in the most direct
manner to reach the shore, we were instantly
defeated by the soft and treacherous sands into
which our horses sank. This compelled us to
wind round the bay, which forms the upper extremity,
that we might gain a rocky shore lying
under a low cape, or promontory, that divided us
from the city and fortress of Machærus.

Having accomplished our object, we stood
upon the rocks against which the water lay,
reached down and tasted for ourselves its exceeding
bitterness, and looked into those clear
depths which the eye penetrates as they were
composed of crystal. It demanded but slight
effort of the fancy to make me believe, that far
down in those dismal solitudes, I beheld the
pinnacles and towers, the temples and the walls
of the devoted cities; and that I could still hear,
as the peasants affirm they ever do, the moaning
or the imprecations of the wicked spirits there
overwhelmed, and whom the justice of God
still binds in their watery prisons. I lay along
upon the rocks and gazed, and listened, till I
was weary, and I was roused by Ziba's voice,
saying, that it was time we set on for Machærus,
would we reach that place before night.