This luxuriance may partly be owing to the coolness and dampness which reigns during the night in tropical countries, quickening and renewing the whole face of nature.
The goal of our journey for to-day lay about eight miles distant from Jerusalem.

It was the Greek convent of "St.Saba in the Waste." The appellation already indicates that the region around becomes more and more sterile, until at length not a single tree or shrub can be detected.

Throughout the whole expanse not the lowliest human habitation was to be seen.

We only passed a horde of Bedouins, who had erected their sooty-black tents in the dry bed of a river.

A few goats, horses, and asses climbed about the declivities, laboriously searching for herbs or roots.
About half an hour before we reach the convent we enter upon the wilderness in which our Saviour fasted forty days, and was afterwards "tempted of the devil." Vegetation here entirely ceases; not a shrub nor a root appears; and the bed of the brook Cedron is completely dry.