io6 MEMORIES OF MY LIFE
back, and hired a camel, which was not a usual conveyance, to take me from Jaffa to Jerusalem. The exaltation I felt at the first sight of the walls was far too high to last long. It was broken in the night by the miaulings of cats, the flat roofs of the houses forming an almost unlimited playground for those tinscriptural and half-diabolical creatures.
I those days the course o(` thej )rims 1)"Id been untravelled, as I was assured, since the memory of man, and the Dead Sea had never been navigated, with one solitary and most painful exception a year or two previously. Captain Costigan, whose accomplished married sister, Mrs. Bradshaw, I counted among my Leamington friends, had transported a boat to the Dead Sea. His man, or men, played him false, emptying the water keg in order that they might sooner get at the wine. He started with, I think, only a single man, the wind was unfavourable to return, he had to toil at the oar under the blazing sun, caught sunstroke and died.
The peace among the tribes who occupied the valley of the Jordan, which had been favourable to him, still continued, and I determined on an expedition down it, having then temporarily thrown off the ague. It seemed possible that the Jordan might be descended on a small raft of inflated water skins, or " kelligs," so I procured half a dozen of them, with the necessary lashings and other gear, and started with a few horsemen for Tiberias. I put the raft together just below the small bridge through which the Jordan runs out of the lake, and my escort travelled by the side of the river to render assistance when needed, and to form camp from time to time. I t was rather a hare-brained
