The Jordan Valley and Petra . ming lands, the ancient water-courses, the fine stream, the circles of stones, theruins which have not been broken up to be builtinto the modern town, all point to this as a veryancient dwelling-place in the land of Gilead. Themodern inhabitants, like those in so many of thesetrans-Jordanic towns, are made up of men who, ageneration ago, found it to their best interests toleave their old homes and camp outside the influ-ence of the Turkish government. But they areall Christians, and both the Greek and the LatinChurches have followed and within a very fewyears have
The Jordan Valley and Petra . ming lands, the ancient water-courses, the fine stream, the circles of stones, theruins which have not been broken up to be builtinto the modern town, all point to this as a veryancient dwelling-place in the land of Gilead. Themodern inhabitants, like those in so many of thesetrans-Jordanic towns, are made up of men who, ageneration ago, found it to their best interests toleave their old homes and camp outside the influ-ence of the Turkish government. But they areall Christians, and both the Greek and the LatinChurches have followed and within a very fewyears have reared two fine stone churches, whoseecclesiastics dispute with each other over the an-cient remains of Christian churches and the morerecent wrecks of human hearts. On the fagade ofthe Greek orthodox church is a large terra-cottamedallion with the Russian arms, and the priestand school look to the Russian workers in Nazarethas their superiors ; while the Latin monastery andchurch, draw their supplies and aid from ^ Jerash to Madeba 239 The amount of money already spent by the two greatdivisions of oriential Christianity is far out of pro-portion to the needs of the place, but is an evi-dence and example of modern zeal to claim andoccupy the ancient Christian sites east of theJordan. We will see many examples of this spiritas we move southward. When we had finished our afternoon tea, weamused the people of the place by packing rifle bul-lets in the trunk of an olive tree some two hundredyards away. This also gave warning to any ma-rauders that prowling about our tents would beattended with danger. We attribute a great deal of our freedom frommolestation throughout the whole trip to our con-tinual rifle practice. Whenever we reached campbefore dark, while the men were putting up thetents we would put up a mark and pound away atit. We had plenty of ammunition, and were notafraid of using it. We invariably had an interestedcrowd of spectators, and those who had guns w
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