About an hour’s ride over a rough, rocky road,
half flooded with water, and through a forest of oaks
of Bashan, brought us to Dan.
From a little mound here in the plain issues a broad
stream of limpid water and forms a large shallow pool,
and then rushes furiously onward, augmented in volume.
This puddle is an important source of the Jordan.
Its banks, and those of the brook are respectably adorned
with blooming oleanders, but the unutterable beauty
of the spot will not throw a well-balanced man into
convulsions, as the Syrian books of travel would lead
one to suppose.
From the spot I am speaking of, a cannon-ball would
carry beyond the confines of Holy Land and light upon
profane ground three miles away. We were only
one little hour’s travel within the borders of
Holy Land—we had hardly begun to appreciate
yet that we were standing upon any different sort
of earth than that we had always been used to, and
see how the historic names began already to cluster!
Dan—Bashan—Lake Huleh —the
Sources of Jordan—the Sea of Galilee.
They were all in sight but the last, and it was not
far away. The little township of Bashan was
once the kingdom so famous in Scripture for its bulls
and its oaks. Lake Huleh is the Biblical “Waters
of Merom.” Dan was the northern and Beersheba
the southern limit of Palestine—hence the
expression “from Dan to Beersheba.”
It is equivalent to our phrases “from Maine
to Texas” —“from Baltimore
to San Francisco.” Our expression and that
of the Israelites both mean the same—great
distance. With their slow camels and asses,
it was about a seven days’ journey from Dan to
Beersheba—–say a hundred and fifty
or sixty miles—it was the entire length
of their country, and was not to be undertaken without
great preparation and much ceremony. When the
Prodigal traveled to “a far country,” it
is not likely that he went more than eighty or ninety
miles. Palestine is only from forty to sixty
miles wide. The State of Missouri could be split
into three Palestines, and there would then be enough
material left for part of another—possibly
a whole one. From Baltimore to San Francisco
is several thousand miles, but it will be only a seven
days’ journey in the cars when I am two or three
years older.—[The railroad has been completed
since the above was written.]—If I live
I shall necessarily have to go across the continent
every now and then in those cars, but one journey
from Dan to Beersheba will be sufficient, no doubt.
It must be the most trying of the two. Therefore,
if we chance to discover that from Dan to Beersheba
seemed a mighty stretch of country to the Israelites,
let us not be airy with them, but reflect that it was
and is a mighty stretch when one can not traverse
it by rail.
