Russian Pilgrims Dip in Jordan's Stream

1905

Jerusalem itself has so much of interest for the traveler that we had spent a week there before we felt an inclination to look beyond its immediate vicinity and go down to Jericho.

Probably no trip of the length of all the excursions about Jerusalem surpasses in interest this short one to the shores of the Dead Sea, for in it are combined the most diverse attractions. One sees the Jericho road, famous since the story of the Good Samaritan: the sites of the Jerichos of Joshua and of Jesus, where Zacchaeus, the chief publican, climbed into the branches of the sycamore tree to see the Lord pass by; the ford of Jordan, where the Israelites passed over against Jericho, and where tradition places the baptism of Jesus by John; and the Dead Sea, unique among bodies of water in its combination of the sterile saltness of its waters and their extraordinary depression below the level of the sea. There is another feature of the excursion, the Wady Kelt, the "Brook Cherith" of the Old Testament, where the prophet Elijah hid in a cave and was fed by ravens when fleeing for his life from Jezebel.

The immediate occasion of our going down to Jericho, however, was the news that a great number of Russian pilgrims would, the following day, celebrate the Greek Epiphany by baptizing themselves, to the number of 2,000, in the Jordan river, while the Patriarch of the Jordan blessed the waters, thus commemorating the baptism of Jesus, which a more than doubtful tradition places at this fold of the Jordan instead of farther north. A great deal of interest in this sight was felt in Jerusalem, and when we made up our party and began to inquire for a carriage we found that every comfortable conveyance in the city was already spoken for, and that we would be lucky to get any vehicle at all.

Along the Jericho Road

It was therefore a rather stiff and rusty old fourposter into which we bundled, early the next morning, for our twenty-mile drive down the Jericho road. The morning was cool and the day, which looked undecided when we left the Jaffa gate and turned the northwest angle of the city wall, soon cleared finely. We turned again at the northeast angle, "the Stork's Tower," descended into the Kedron valley, passed the Mount of Olives, and began to wind in among the brown hills toward Bethany. The road was good, one of the few roads in Palestine, where paths are the usual and almost the only thoroughfares.

We passed Bethany, and found our first halting place at Khan-Hadrur, a little solitary khan by the wayside, where Jerusalem drivers stop to feed their horses. It was 9 o'clock, and while the horses were being fed we inspected the cave which does duty as the Inn of the Good Samaritan, who seems to have emerged from the parable into real life. Half an hour farther on we passed close to the Wady Kelt, sometimes identified with Elijah's Brook Cherith, and we left the carriage to scramble over the rocks into the barren gorge. Far below us, on the other side, we could see the white walls of a strangely Italian monastery, hanging over the abyss in what seemed a very precarious fashion. It was the Monastery of St. George, the only building in the gorge, but not the only dwelling, for the steep, rocky walls of the Wady were honeycombed with the caves of hermits of the past and present, and their ladders could in some places be seen hanging straight down the face of the cliff, before the mouths of their rocky dens. Except for the little garden of the convent, and a slender thread of verdure along the little brook at the bottom of the gorge all that one could see was waste and barren, the sides of the valley descending, treeless and arid, steeply to the slender stream that murmured along, far below us.

In the Jordan Valley

Rejoining the carriage we proceeded and soon rolled out into the broad plain into which the Jordan valley widens at the head of the Dead sea. The so-called Fountain of Elijah, a copious spring near Jericho, together with the waters of Jordan, are amply sufficient to water and develop this whole plain, as, indeed, they were made to do in ancient times. But Turkish authority so persistently discourages enterprise of every sort that nothing of this kind is dreamed of now, and the river and the spring send their waters idly into the Dead sea, almost unvexed by any irrigating appliances.

From every point of view the Dead sea is interesting. Hereabouts lay the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, whose overthrow makes so striking a picture in Old Testament annals. The Arabs still call the sea "Bahr Lut," the Sea of Lot, after the patriarch, who, tempted by the rich pasturage of this then smiling valley, "pitched his tent toward Sodom." Here, also as far as ancient records can vouch for, is the tomb of Rachel.

We hastened away to the Jordan fords, where the ceremony of blessing the waters and the self-immersion of the Russian pilgrims were to take place. In perhaps an hour we reached the spot, a low, muddy space beside the river, with some groves of small trees near by. The pilgrims were already assembled, to the number of some two thousand, and were engaged in putting on coarse slips or shifts of white cloth. For this purpose some, but not all of them, withdrew to the bushes. Some neglected the use of the slips, and altogether it was an extraordinary scene. A certain dignity, however, attached to the scene, disgusting as some of the features of it undoubtedly were, for these rude peasants, in their coarse boots and rough clothing, were sturdy men and women, with the marks of toil and hardship written plainly on their faces; and they were deeply, quietly in earnest about this Jordan baptism, to undergo which they had come thousands of miles, and endured not a little hardship and privation. They had all walked from Jerusalem, a distance of over twenty miles, and they were all to walk back thither, the following days.

Ceremony of Baptism

The Bishop of the Jordan was in the midst of a sort of preliminary service in a little open air chapel near the river bank, and a great crowd surrounded it. But the most of the pilgrims were gathered along the bank of the river, which here makes one of its numerous bends.

The waters were a muddy brown, and as they ran swiftly along between their mud banks they were anything but inviting. The pilgrims never gave the matter a thought, however; in sober silence they helped each other in with their white slips, and then awaited the appearance of the Bishop. He appeared at length and two boats received him, in his ecclesiastical robes, with the striking headdress characteristic of the clergy of the Greek church, and the Greek and Russian consuls, with their ladies. These last, in their European gowns, struck the only note of fashion in that strange assembly. No other boats were about; a swimmer now and then braved the strong current of the turbid river, and crossed and recrossed the narrow stream.

The two boats were now in midstream; the bishop rose and blessed the waters, flinging into them a golden cross, and all the waiting peasants rushed in. Three times they plunged their heads beneath the muddy waters, then fell to filling the flasks and bottles they had brought with them, to take back to their distant homes. The slips worn on these occasions are carefully preserved by their wearers to serve as grave clothes when their possessors die, and some extra suits we saw dipped in the water, evidently for friends at home who had been unable to make the pilgrimage.

The river bank was not a pleasant place when, ten minutes later, these 2,000 dripping pilgrims were crowding their way up it, and changing their clothes, and we were glad to make the best of our way out of it and drive to the little town of Eriha, and our hotel.