Haifa, Sept. 2.—The signs of progress to which I have alluded in former letters as being manifest in Judea are not confined to Jaffa and Jerusalem. The contemplated carriage-road to Jericho will be an immense boon to the crowds of pilgrims who flock annually to the Jordan. The first evidence of activity in this direction was at the Khan el-Ahmah. Here are the ruins of an old building. Fragments of walls and broken arches remain, and a deep well indicates that in former days it was inhabited—probably as a half-way house of entertainment. Whether this be so or not, I was glad to see a large force of stone-masons and builders actively engaged, under the superintendence of a European, in erecting a handsome khan or rest-house, which, considering that there is not at present a single habitation between Jerusalem and Jericho, with the exception of Bethany, distant only two miles from the former city, is much needed.
This place has always had an evil reputation for thieves since the days when the Good Samaritan performed his charitable offices to the plundered and beaten wayfarer. Indeed, it is at this very place that the spot is shown to the credulous pilgrim where the incident in the parable is said to have occurred, and the guide-books solemnly warn the tourist that he must be careful to be provided with an escort, because an English traveller, Sir Frederick Henniker, was attacked here by Bedouins, stripped, wounded, and left for dead in 1820. This is imputing stagnation to the Turkish government with a vengeance. It moves slowly, it is true, but the state of security has improved somewhat in sixty-five years. Six years ago I rode alone with a friend from Jericho to Jerusalem with no thought of danger. The Bedouins find it to their interest to keep up the traditions of the guide-books, and travellers continue to pay Bedouin sheiks blackmail which they might with perfect confidence keep in their pockets. I consider the road from Jerusalem to Jericho in the present day as safe as Broadway, at all events in the daytime.
It might not be safe to venture along it quite alone at night, but the same might be said of roads in other far more civilized countries. Nevertheless, the road in places is so wild and desolate that it may well appal the imagination of the timid traveller, notably so where it enters the Wady Kelt, a deep, narrow gorge, flanked by precipitous cliffs, honeycombed with caverns, above which rise white chalk hills, presenting a tangled network of narrow water-worn torrent beds with knife-like ridges between. Hundreds of feet below the path rushes a mountain torrent, which is none other than the traditional brook Cheritt. Here, if we leave the regular track, and make up our minds to follow a dizzy path cut out of the precipitous cliff, which winds back up the gorge, soon disappearing in the depth of its gloomy recesses, we plunge into one of the wildest and weirdest scenes that the ingenuity of nature has conceived in any country, so fantastic are the crags and so labyrinthine the gorges. The only travellers who ever thus diverge from the beaten route are Russian pilgrims, whose devotional instincts lead them to pay their homage to every accessible shrine, and to the credit of the Greek Church it must be said that it has contrived to perch shrines on spots which nature only intended for eagles.