ABBOTSFORD, 1st July, 1832.
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TALES OF THE CRUSADERS. TALE II.--THE TALISMAN.
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CHAPTER I.
They, too, retired
To the wilderness, but 'twas with arms. PARADISE REGAINED.
The burning sun of Syria had not yet attained its highest point
in the horizon, when a knight of the Red Cross, who had left his
distant northern home and joined the host of the Crusaders in
Palestine, was pacing slowly along the sandy deserts which lie in
the vicinity of the Dead Sea, or, as it is called, the Lake
Asphaltites, where the waves of the Jordan pour themselves into
an inland sea, from which there is no discharge of waters.
The warlike pilgrim had toiled among cliffs and precipices during
the earlier part of the morning. More lately, issuing from those
rocky and dangerous defiles, he had entered upon that great
plain, where the accursed cities provoked, in ancient days, the
direct and dreadful vengeance of the Omnipotent.
The toil, the thirst, the dangers of the way, were forgotten, as
the traveller recalled the fearful catastrophe which had
converted into an arid and dismal wilderness the fair and fertile
valley of Siddim, once well watered, even as the Garden of the
Lord, now a parched and blighted waste, condemned to eternal
sterility.
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