Counting His Blessings
1. Facing the Jordan
To obtain a view unobscured by these developments, one must slip away to another time and investigate the writing of premodern travelers. Three quotes are offered here. This first is from the pen of George Adam Smith. The Historical Geography of the Holy Land was based upon four journeys through the land between 1880 and 1904. Smith offers one impression of the Jordan.
The river itself is from 90 to 100 feet broad, a rapid, muddy water with a zigzag current. The depth varies from 3 feet at some fords to as much as 10 or 12. In the sixty-five miles the descent is 610 feet, or an average of 9 feet a mile.… The swiftness is rendered more dangerous by the muddy bed and curious zigzag current which will easily sweep a man from the side into the centre of the stream. In April the waters rise to the wider bed, but for the most of the year they keep to the channel of 90 feet. Here, with infrequent interruptions of shingle, mostly silent and black in spite of its speed, but now and then breaking into praise and whitening into foam, Jordan scours along, muddy between banks of mud, careless of beauty, careless of life, intent upon its own work, which for ages by decree of the Almighty has been that of separation.
In Carl Ritter’s classic The Comparative Geography of Palestine and the Sinaitic Peninsula, a second testimony is discovered:
In proportion to the difficulty in crossing the Jordan in the winter time, when it is almost impossible for any but the Beduins to pass from bank to bank, is the ease of crossing in the summer time, when it may be passed in countless places. Above Beisan these are very numerous; below they are less frequent, and yet the Arabs appear to cross with their flocks and herds, judging from the fact that they are found as often on the west as on the east bank of the river. In July, when Burckhardt passed over the Jordan at Sukkat, where it was eight paces wide, it was only three feet deep. When Irby and Mangles crossed at the same ford, on the 13th of March, it was about a hundred and forty feet wide; the water ran with much force, and reached up to the girth of the horses. When, twelve days later, they crossed by a ford yet more to the south, which they erroneously considered to be that of Gilgal, the Jordan was to their amazement so swollen, that the horses only reached the other side by swimming, and all the goods were wet through. Buckingham and Banks found a ford two hours north of Jericho, and near the Wadi Faisail, where the breadth of the stream on the 29th of January was twenty-five yards.
Third and finally, the testimony of J.W. McGarvey may be considered.
We cross by a ford almost due east from Elisha’s Fountain called Gharanizeh, and sometimes the Jericho ford.… A ferryboat is kept in readiness, and must be used during a large part of the year, but just below the ferry-crossing the water breaks over a shoal, and at the head of this it can be forded when it is very deep above. The author’s party forded here on the 5th of May, 1879, the water coming about half-way up our saddle-skirt.