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However far we may travel, we come back to Naaman's state of mind: "Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?" It is with rivers as it is with people: the greatest are not always the most agreeable, nor the best to live with.

There is an honored old tradition that the immense garden which Damascus stands in was the Garden of Eden, and modern writers have gathered up many chapters of evidence tending to show that it really was the Garden of Eden, and that the rivers Pharpar and Abana are the "two rivers" that watered Adam's Paradise.

"I have used the Tractors with success in several other cases in my own family, and although, like Naaman the Syrian, I cannot tell why the waters of Jordan should be better than Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus; yet since experience has proved them so, no reasoning can change the opinion.

But would to God your eyes were opened to see the inside of it, and not to be like proud Naaman, who said, "What better is this water of Jordan than the water of Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus?" As some say, What better is this feast than the feast we have at home?

I never disliked a Chinaman as I do these degraded Turks and Arabs, and when Russia is ready to war with them again, I hope England and France will not find it good breeding or good judgment to interfere. In Damascus they think there are no such rivers in all the world as their little Abana and Pharpar. The Damascenes have always thought that way.

"From the city we journeyed northward, up past Bethel, where Jacob saw a new vision, and got a new heart, and on, past the blue waters of Galilee, and across the great plain, battle-ground of the ancient nations, and over the Lebanons to Damascus and Baalbec, and then to the sea, and homeward thence; and always and everywhere scrutinizing the present, or reaching back into the past; drinking from the sparkling waters of Abana and Pharpar, or searching for the wall over which Paul was let down in a basket; impressed by the ruins of half-buried temples and cities, or looking forward, with sublime faith in the prophecy and promise, to the time when all things shall be made new; Carleton was always the same thoughtful, genial, courteous companion and sympathizing friend.

Ward's discourse that evening was about Naaman the Syrian, and the pride he had in his native rivers of Abana and Pharpar, which he vainly imagined to be superior to the healing waters of Jordan the moral being, that he, Ward, was the keeper and guardian of the undoubted waters of Jordan, and that the unhappy, conceited boys must go to perdition unless they came to him.

Ah, my eagle-eyes, Judea, too, had its Jordan, and Damascus its Abana and Pharpar, and little Massachusetts its Merrimac, which, "poet-tuned, Goes singing down his meadows." But Judea did not type Damascus.

We must remember the case of Naaman, who was vexed at being told to go and dip himself in a mud-stained stream running violently in rocky places, when he might have washed in Abana and Pharpar, the statelier, purer, fuller streams of his native land. It is just the little homely torrent that we need, and part of our cares come from being too dignified about them.

This land is, also a great grazing region, and for more than three thousand years Bashan has been celebrated for its fine breed of cattle. Some distance south of Damascus I cross the headwaters of the Pharpar River, whose clear, sparkling water Naaman considered much more suitable for a general's bath than the muddy water of the Jordan.