The road to Jericho is a descent of over three thousand feet, but at a point nearly half way, a long and steep climb brings you from the transverse valley Sa'b-el-Meshak to the Khan of the Good Samaritan. At this point it occurred to the Lady's horse to have a private exhibition on his own account, and to set off at a truly breakneck gallop, with which no other animal in the party could possibly compete, even had it been wise to follow, except at a considerable distance. Her strength was quite inadequate to check him, but in the length and steepness of the hill lay promise of safety, and it was with infinite relief that he was seen to pull up at last. He had no vice, but the occasion was not one for a steeplechase, and it was decided that, on the morrow, there should be a "general post" of horses, the mukari being made responsible for his Derby winner, and the Professor arranging, by exchange with one of the Sportsmen, to ride an animal which would admit of conversation with the officer, for such attainments as our leader's have not been achieved by sitting in a library, or by confinement to the professorial chair of his university, but rather by personal intercourse with the Arabs in the various dialects of their own clans, by life in the desert, and association with wandering tribes in the unexplored districts of the Peræa Haurân and of Central Arabia.
The Sportsmen carried guns, the Doctor a notebook—though he was more than suspected of yearning for a rifle,—the revolver which he carried at his belt being better adapted for the murder of man than of beast—not that the murder of man, to judge from the experiences of earlier travellers, was a wholly improbable contingency. Our road led us along almost the entire length of the north and east wall of Jerusalem; we then crossed the bridge over the Kedron valley—the brook, if any exist, is now far below the surface; we passed the Garden of Gethsemane, skirted the southern slope of the Mount of Olives, hastened past the filthy hovels of the little village of Bethany, crowned by the so-called Castle of Lazarus, probably the remains of a pre-crusading Benedictine convent, and finally, about seven o'clock, pulled up at what is known as the Inn of the Apostles' Fountain, just such a building as a child might draw upon a slate. As this is the only well between Bethany and Jericho it may be safely assumed that the apostles, coming up to Jerusalem, would drink here, though it is to be hoped that it was less contaminated than at present; for even the careless natives strain the water through a sieve before allowing their animals to drink, though, nevertheless, they still acquire leeches, as the bleeding mouths of the camels and donkeys one meets along the road frequently betray. The spot has been marked by a succession of buildings; a little white dome over the well, and some hewn stones and the ruins of an aqueduct in the hill across the road, being all that now remains of its old dignity.