to Jerusalem, Gaza, and Rhinocolura. Its position, he says, corresponds to that of the Gerassa of Ptolemy, 32 miles from Aila. At length the route turned eastward out of Wady Araba into Wady Garandel, near the embouchure of which are some ruins which the Author supposes to have been part of a fortress which defended on that side the entrance to Petra. This valley exhibited in its verdure a welcome contrast to the desolate wastes around it. A stream, descending from the heights, loses itself at the distance of a few paces, but nourishes a bed of rushes, some shrubs, and two palm-trees. And this scanty vegetation gives beauty to the little oasis. The next day, emerging into a small plain, our Author had the satisfaction of coming in sight of Mount Hor and the rocks which overlook Wady Moosa.

The Translator has committed a strange blunder in supposing the Wady Garandel above-mentioned to be the Wady Gharendel of Burckhardt, and the Girondel of Niebuhr, which those Travellers conjecture to have been, on very slender grounds, the Elim of Exodus. That Gharandel lies in the route from Suez to Mount Sinai, an hour and a quarter from Howara, on the western side of the Sinaitic peninsula. The notes, therefore, which refer to this Wady, are adapted to mislead the reader by involving the topography of the route in confusion. The name is, no doubt, a descriptive appellation common to many wadys.

As we are upon the subject of errors, we may as well mention a very strange blunder which occurs in chap. vii., and for which, we presume, M. Laborde is himself responsible. Two of his guides took their guns to go and hunt the gazelle; and in the course of a few hours they returned, disappointed of game, but bringing with them four of the curious species of animal supposed to be the saphan of the Scriptures, but called by the natives weber or waber; and daman Israel. In appearance, it resembles the guinea-pig; it walks like a rabbit, but, instead of burrowing, it conceals itself in the clefts of the rocks. Forskal describes it as resembling a cat without a tail, feeding on herbage; adding, that its flesh is eaten by the natives. Now, whether M. Laborde's guides called this animal a gazelle in joke,—as mice and rats or rabbits are familiarly styled small deer,' we cannot tell; but it is passing strange that M. Laborde should not be aware, if his Translator fairly represents him, that the gazelle is the antelope, the tzebi or dsabi of the Scriptures, and the dorcas of the Greeks. The spring-bok (antelope pygarga) of southern Africa, distinguished alike for its swiftness and its beauty, is called by its Hebrew name (txebi) in the Sichuana language, which prevails over the interior of South Africa. Burckhardt, our Translator marks in a note, frequently speaks of the gazelle, which he had often seen. Of course; but he knew better than to mistake a weasel for a gazelle.

re

The approach to Petra from the south must be extremely imposing.

We wound round a peak, surmounted by a single tree. The view from that point exhibited a vast frightful desert,--a chaotic sea, the waves of which were petrified. Following the beaten road, we saw before us Mount Hor, crowned by the tomb of the prophet, if we are to credit the ancient traditions preserved by the people of that country. Several large and ruinous excavations, which are seen in the way, may arrest the attention of a traveller who is interested by such objects, and has no notion of those still concealed from his view by the curtain of rocks which extends before him. But at length the road leads him to the heights above one more ravine, whence he discovers within his horizon the most singular spectacle, the most enchanting picture which nature has wrought in her grandest mood of creation, which men influenced by the vainest dreams of ambition have yet bequeathed to the generations that were to follow them. At Palmyra, nature renders the works of man insignificant by her own immensity and her boundless horizon, within which some hundreds of columns seem entirely lost. Here, on the contrary, she appears delighted to set in her own noble frame work his productions, which aspire, and not unsuccessfully, to harmonize with her own majestic, yet fantastic appearance. The spectator hesitates for a moment as to which of the two he is the more to admire,-whether he is to accord the preference to nature who invites his attention to her matchless girdle of rocks, wondrous as well for their colour as their forms, or to the men who feared not to intermingle the works of their genius with such splendid efforts of creative power.

*

'We arrived from the south, and descended by the ravine which presents itself near the border or margin below. By advancing a little in that direction, we commanded a view of the whole city covered with ruins, and of its superb enclosure of rocks, pierced with myriads of tombs, which form a series of wondrous ornaments all round. Astonished by these countless excavations, I dismounted from my dromedary, and sketched a tomb which seemed to me to combine in itself two characters, each of which may be found separately in those by which it is surrounded; the upper part being in the Syriaco-Egyptian style, the lower part decorated in the Græco-Roman fashion.

To the right of this monument, and at a short distance from it, we found two tombs entirely detached from the rock of which they originally formed a part. Behind that which terminates in a point, there is a sculptured stone in the form of a fan, and which appears, though at some distance, to be an ornament belonging to the first, for I could discover no other to which it could appertain. These monuments are more particularly connected with the mode of excavation in use among the Indians. Still proceeding along the bottom of the ravine towards the north, we observed on our left, an uninterrupted line of elevated rocks, the numerous excavations in which, wrought in a variety of styles, continued at every step to excite our astonishment. On quitting the ravine which turns on the left into the mountain, we ascended

by a gentle acclivity: when we arrived at the top, we discovered another series of magnificent monuments, but at the same time in a condition nearly resembling the mass of ruins which cover the ground beneath.' pp. 147–155.

One remarkable excavation attracted particular attention from its unfinished state, which afforded a clew to the plan pursued in the construction of these monuments. An architrave and four sculptured capitals are seen rising out of the mass of rock which forms the face of the excavation; shewing that the workmen began at the top, and finished at the bottom. A large square door has been opened in the unfinished front, leading into a chamber, which appears, from the niches for bodies, to have been actually used as a receptacle for the dead. M. Laborde supposes that the great expense of the work may have led to its being left in this imperfect state externally.

It was truly a strange spectacle,-a city filled with tombs, some scarcely begun, some finished, looking as new and as fresh as if they had just come from the hands of the sculptor; while others seemed to be the abode of lizards, fallen into ruin, and covered with brambles. One would be inclined to think that the former population had no employment which was not connected with death, and that they had been all surprised by death during the performance of some funeral solemnities.'

At the commencement of the only level part of the valley, where the Wady Moosa passes under a vaulted covering, are found the ruins of a triumphal arch, not in a good style, being overcharged with ornament. Here is supposed to have been the forum of the city. The brook afterwards, bending to the south, enters a ravine which gradually narrows as the traveller ad

vances.

Excavations, not indeed of the most elegant description, but numerous beyond calculation, here present themselves on all sides. The excavation, however, that most excited our attention was a vast theatre in the bosom of the mountain, surmounted, and in some degree sheltered by the rocks...... The benches, though worn by use, and by the waters which run over them from the heights, are pretty well preserved, and permit an accurate plan to be taken of the interior. The situation of the stage may be easily ascertained; and we saw also several bases of columns, the original position of which it was not difficult to conjecture. But what surprised us most, was the selection of such a spot for a place of amusement, considering the prospect it afforded on all sides of death and its mansions, which touch the very sides of the

* In the same manner, the Saxon buttresses in St. Alban's Abbey have been transformed into Gothic arches, as appears from one that has only been begun.

theatre. What a strange habit of mind the people of Petra must have possessed, thus to familiarize themselves so constantly to the idea of death, as Mithridates accustomed himself to poison, in order to render himself insensible to its effects!'

6

The people of Petra discovered, in this respect, no habit of mind peculiar to themselves. All the great approaches to ancient Rome were lined, like the street of the tombs at Pompeii, with the pompous memorials of the dead, intermingling with shops, and semicircular seats, and villas; thus blending the public walk with the cemetery, as if the dark spirits of the old heathen solaced 'themselves with the idea of still retaining, after death, some 'connexion with the thronged and busy scene.' Mixed and various motives led, no doubt, to the erection of these monuments, which, while ostensibly honouring the dead, displayed the wealth, and gratified the vanity of the living; like the flattering marble in our own ecclesiastical edifices. M. Laborde is right, however, in concluding that these scenic decorations of the grave were much more adapted to blunt the idea of death, and to lower down to a trite and frivolous sentiment the hopes and fears of an hereafter, than to cherish any salutary and pious recollections of mortality. Yet, we may conceive of the impressive reference that may have been made by the orator or the moralist, in the form of apostrophe, to these tombs of the happy dead,' whose spirits might be poetically imagined to look down upon the contests of the stadium or the disputes of the forum. And we incline to think that the inspired Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews had present to his mind some such scene as the theatre of Petra, surrounded with the dwellings of the dead, when he penned that sublime passage* which represents the Christian candidate as running the prescribed course, encircled by so numerous a cloud of heavenly spectators, the martyrs and confessors whose heroic faith he had been holding out as an example. Such an allusion seems to heighten the beauty and appositeness of the metaphor.

6

The inscriptions which would assist us in fixing the date of these sepulchral excavations, are for the most part effaced by time. M. Laborde mentions a Greek inscription engraved in 'large characters on the architrave' of one tomb, which, however, neither himself nor several enlightened Hellenists' had been able to deciphert. He afterwards discovered a Latin inscription of three lines, carved on a tablet, which appears to be ' of the time of Adrian or of Antoninus Pius,' It gives the name

* Heb. xii. 1, 2.

+ Mr. Bankes detected two inscriptions, the characters of which are exactly similar to those which are seen scratched on the rocks about the foot of Mount Sinai, supposed to be some form of the Syriac.

of a Roman officer, Quintus Prætextus Florentinus, who died at Petra, while governor of this part of Arabia Provincia.

That this natural fastness, which may be described as a fortified labyrinth in the heart of the rocks, was at a very early period chosen as a commercial entrepôt, is historically certain. Strabo and Pliny both describe Petra, the capital of the Nabatæi (or Idumeans) as situated in a hollow surrounded with inaccessible mountains, and watered by a stream flowing through it. Josephus expressly mentions the place of Aaron's decease as a mountain near a city which the Arabians esteem their metropolis, and which had, among the Greeks, the name of Petra, but which was originally called Řekem, Arekem, or Arke, from the name of the king that founded it. And by this name, he says, it was still known to the whole Arabian nation. This Rekem is moreover stated to have been one of the five kings or chiefs of Midian overthrown by Moses, and whose name occurs Numb. xxxi. 8. That the Midianites were a commercial people, the carriers of the desert, is indicated by Gen. xxxvii. 28 and 36; and the prophet Isaiah 'speaks of the dromedaries of Midian (ch. lx. 6.) They might be styled Midianites, either as descended from the son of Abraham and Keturah, or as possessing the territory bearing his name. Their dwelling in cities and "goodly fortresses" (Numb. xxxi. 10), sufficiently distinguishes them, however, from the nomadic tribes of the desert. The Nabatheans* were either the same people, as they were certainly of the same stock, or the Midianites were lost in them as they gained the ascendancy. Strabo identifies the Nabatheans with the Idumeans or Edomites; but Idumea Proper, the capital of which was Bostra, appears to have consisted of the region of Trachonitis, or the rocky wilderness now called the Ledja†, and the districts of Batanea and Auranitis. Calmet distinguishes the Nabathean territory, of which Petra was the capital, as South Idumea. It is probable that the whole region comprised in the Arabia Provincia of the Romans was called Idumea; and Teman, or Thæman, which is repeatedly referred to as a chief city or district of Edom, in connexion with Boszra and Dedant, is placed by Eusebius in Arabia Petræa, five miles from Petra, and he states that a Roman garririson was stationed there. He may possibly intend by Petra, however, Kerek, the see of the Greek bishop of Battra (TEτgas), which has long been mistaken for Petra, and is now the frontier

* Derived, probably, from Nebaioth, the first born of Ishmael, and if so, synonymous with Ishmaelite.

To this rocky district, as the residence of Edom, the prophet Obadiah probably alludes: "Thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rocks, whose dwelling is on high." Obad. 3.

Jer. xlix. 7; Ezek. xxv. 13; Amos i. 12.