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Yonder, on the other side of the great gulf of heliotrope shadow, stretches the long bulk of the Jebel Ajlûn, shaggy with oak-trees. It was somewhere on the slopes of that wooded mountain that one of the most tragic battles of the world was fought. For there the army of Absalom went out to meet the army of his father David.
Almost with reverence we drink again; then we remount our horses and proceed along the wady past the village of Ajlun where an Arab joins us and guides us on over fertile patches of ground and through olive groves until we reach the modern town of Coefrinje, a town that probably contains several thousand inhabitants. It is in the midst of an olive grove well up on the side of the mountains.
Yet to the tourist there is much of interest in this region. My way to the Jordan lay over these mountains, especially that part known as the Jebel Ajlun. Sometimes it seemed impossible to proceed because of rocks and underbrush.
Early the next morning we go down, and down, and down, by ledge and terrace and grassy slope, into the Vale of Jabbok. It is sixty miles long, beginning on the edge of the mountain of Moab, and curving eastward, northward, westward, south-westward, between Gilead and Ajlûn, until it opens into the Jordan Valley.
But he did unto her according to his word; and annually thereafter for a period of four days these hills resounded with the voice of weeping the weeping of the maidens of Mizpah over the sad fate of Jephthah's daughter. Farther on we ascend a high ridge and then begin our descent into the southern branch of the wady of Ajlun.
After winding about for some time among the rocks and brush in the dry bed of this wady we finally halt at Ain Jenneh, a good, strong fountain issuing from under a great rock. We are yet in the upper reaches of the wady and near the present village of Ajlun. Here we lunch and rest an hour. Some authorities identify this region as the place where was the "wood of Ephraim."
There he gained a great victory over self, and he received the new name, 'Israel. And on the next day, a little farther to the south, he met his erst-while angry and murderous brother in peace and happy reconciliation. "A few centuries pass. Then the mighty Moses conquers all this region; and a little later these Ajlun Mountains were given to the tribe of Gad as a permanent home.
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