The Caravan.-A sudden Change of Purpose.-Perils of a Storm.-Comfortless Repentance.-Solitude.-A Woman and a Chase.-A Patriarchal Feast.-Condition of the Arab Women.-Hospitality.-No refusing a good Offer.-A Dilemma . . . . . . . Page 7

Evening Amusements.-A Trial of the Feelings.-A Disappointment.-A Santon of the Desert.-An Arab Fisherman.-Turkish Costume.-A potent Official.-A Comfortless Sick-room.-A Visit from the Sheik.-Interested Friendship.-Akaba.-The El Alouins.-Questionable Piety...........17

Prophecy and Fulfillment.-Unpleasant Suggestions.-The Denounced Land.-Management.-A Rencounter.-An Arab's Cunning.-The Camel's Hump.-Adventure with a Lamb.-Mount Hor.-Delicate Negotiations.-Approach to Petra . . . . . . 34

Petra.-Arrival.-Entrance to the City.-The Temple of Petra.-A Record.-The Theatre.-Tombs of Petra.-Arab Simplicity.-Departure from Petra.-A Night in a Tomb.-Dangers of the Route..... 50

A bold. Endeavour.-Unexpected Obstacles.-Disadvantage of a Dress.- The Dead Sea.-A New Project.-The Tomb of Aaron.-An Alarm.- Descent of the Mountain.-An awkward Meeting.-Poetic License, All's Well that Ends Well.-Unexpected Dignities.-Arab Notions of Travel . . . . . . . . . . . .67

Valley of El Ghor.-Prophecies against Edom.-The Sheik's Treachery.- An Explosion.-Personnel of the Arabs.-Amusing Retrospect.-Money Troubles.-Aspect of the Valley.-Death of a Camel.-The Desert Horses.-Native Salt . . . . . . Page 84

The Road to Gaza.-Unknown Ruins.-A Misadventure.-Pastoral Bedouins.-A Flower of the Wilderness.-The Ravages of War.-Testimony of an Eyewitness - - - - - - - - - - 100

Approach to Hebron.-A Sick Governor.-A Prescription at Random.- Hospitality of the Jews.-Finale with the Bedouins.-A Storm.-A Calm after the Storm.-Venality of the Arabs.-Hebron.-A Coptic Christian.-Story of the Rabbi.-Professional Employment.... 112

An Arnaout.-The Pools of Solomon.-Bethlehem.-The Empress Helena.-A Clerical Exquisite.-Miraculous Localities.-A Boon Companion.-The Soldier's Sleep.-The Birthplace of Christ.-Worship in the Grotto.-Moslem Fidelity . . . . . . . . 132

The Tomb of Rachel.-First View of Jerusalem.-Falling among Thieves. -Potent Sway of the Pacha.-A Turkish Dignitary.-A Missionary.- Easter in Jerusalem.-A Little Congregation..... 149

Church of the Holy Sepulchre.-An unexpected Discovery. -Mount Calvary.-The Sepulchre.-The Valley of Jehoshaphat.-The Garden of Gethsemane.-Place of the Temple.-The four Great Tombs.-Siloa's Brook - - - - - - - - - - - - 160

The Field of Blood.-A Traveller's Compliment.-Singular Ceremony.- A Ragged Rascal.-Ostentatious Humility.-Pride must have a Fall.-An Ancient Relic.-Summary Legislation... 173

The Synagogue.-Ideal Speculation.-A Ride in the Rain.-An Ex-official.-Joppa.-A Moral Phenomenon.-Reverence for the Grave....Page 184

Desert of St. John.-A Midnight Procession.-Road to Jericho.-A Community of Women.-Navigator of the Dead Sea.-A Dance by Moon-light.-A rude Lodging. . . . . . 195

The River Jordan.-Thee Dead Sea.-Force of Example.-Buoyancy of the Dead Sea.-A Perilous Ascent.-A Navigator of the Dead Sea.-Story of the Voyage.-The Convent of Santa Saba ........205

Convent of Saint Saba. -A strange Picture.-Celebration of Good Friday.-Palm Sunday.-A Struggle for Life.-The Grave of a Friend.-A Convert.-Burial of a Missionary . . . . . . . 217

Pilgrimage to the Jordon.-Pilgrim's Certificate.-The Tomb of Samuel.-Departure from Jerusalem.-Last View of the Dead Sea.-Village of Eiribroot.-Departure from Judea.-Mounts Gerizim and Ebal.- An Antique Manuscript.-Paas in Samaria . . . . . 228

Sebaste.-Ruins of the Palace of Herod.-Mount Tabor.-Nazareth.- Scriptural Localities.-Tiberias.-An English Sportsman.-Bethsaida and Chorazin.-Capernaum.-Zaffad.-Arrival at Acre.....244

A Ride on Donkeyback.-Caipha.-Adventure with a Consul.-Mount Carmel.-The Plain of Jezreel.-Convent of Mount Carmel.-Kindness of the Monks.-Curiosity Gratified . . . . . . 268

St. Jean d'Acre.-Extortions of the Pacha.-Tyre.-Questionable Company.-Lady Esther Stanhope.-Departure from the Holy Land-Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . 275

The Caravan.-A sudden Change of Purpose.-Perils of a Storm.-Comfortless Repentance.-Solitude.-A Woman and a Chase.-A Patriarchal Feast.-Condition of the Arab Women.-Hospitality.-No refusing a good Offer.-A Dilemma.

My caravan consisted of five camels, four Arabs, Paul, and myself. We moved silently down the valley, and I tried hard to fasten my thoughts upon Gaza, the strong city of the Philistines, the city of Delilah. and Samson, and to amuse my discontented spirit with imagining the gates which he carried away, and the temple which he pulled down; but it would not do; Petra, the rock of Edom, the excavated city, was uppermost in my mind. We had been marching in perfect silence about four hours, and I was sitting carelessly on my dromedary, thinking of everything but what I saw, when Toualeb pointed to a narrow opening in the mountain as the road to Akaba. I raised my head unconsciously, and it struck me, all of a sudden, that I was perfectly recovered, and fit for any journey. It was a day such as can only be seen in the mountainous desert of Arabia, presenting a clearness and purity in the atmosphere, and a gentle freshness in the air, which might almost bring to life a dying man. I stretched myself and brandished my Nubian club; my arm seemed nerved with uncommon vigour; I rose in my saddle strong as the slayer of the Philistines, and, turning the head of my dromedary towards the opening in the mountains; called out briefly and decidedly, to "Akaba and Petra." Paul was astonished; he took the pipe from his mouth; and for a moment paused; then knocking out the ashes, he slipped from his dromedary and ran up to the side of mine looking up in my face with an expression of countenance that seemed to intimate strong suspicions of my sanity. After gazing at me as steadfastly as he could within, being impertinent, he went away, still apparently in doubt, and I soon saw him following with Toualeb, in earnest conversation. Toualeb was even more astonished than Paul. The Arabs are not used to any of these mercurial changes of humour; and, according to their notion, if a man sets out for Gaza he must go to Gaza; they cannot conceive how one in his right reason can change his mind; and Toualeb would have been very easily persuaded that an evil spirit was hurrying me on, particularly as, like Paul, from the beginning he had opposed my going by Petra and Idumea. Finding me resolute, however, he soon began to run, and brought back the camels, which were some distance in advance, and for several hours we moved on in perfect silence through the wild and rugged defile.

The mountains on each side were high, broken, and rugged, and ever presenting the same appearance of extreme old age. The road, if road it might be called, was rougher than any I had yet travelled; it was the only opening among the mountains by which we could pass at all, made by the hand of Nature, and so encumbered with fallen rocks that it was exceedingly difficult for our camels to advance. I did not intend to push far that day; and a little before dark I proposed to encamp in a narrow pass between the mountains, where there was barely room to pitch our tents; but appearances threatened rain, and Toualeb, pointing to the accumulation of stones and rocks which had fallen from the mountain and been washed through the pass, told me it would be a dangerous place to spend the night in. There was no earth to drink the falling rain, and, pouring down the hard and naked mountain sides, it formed a torrent in the pass, which hurried and dashed along, gathering force at every moment, and carrying with it bodies of sand and stones that would have crushed to atoms any obstruction they might meet in their resistless progress. I felt at once the force of the suggestion; and as I had no idea of being disturbed in the night by such a knock at the door of my tent as one of these gigantic missiles would have made, we kept on our difficult way. At dark we were still in the ravine. Toualeb was right in his apprehensions; for some time before we reached the end of the pass the rain was falling in torrents, the rocks and stones were washing under our feet, and we heard the loud roar of thunder, and saw the forked lightning play among the mountain-tops. It was two hours after dark before we reached a place where it was prudent to encamp. We pitched our tent in the open valley; the thunder was rumbling, and ever and anon bursting with a terrific crash among the riven mountains, and the red lightning was flashing around the hoary head of Sinai. It was a scene for a poet or painter; but, under the circumstances, I would have given all its sublimity for a pair of dry pantaloons. Thunder and lightning among mountains are exceedingly sublime, and excellent things to talk about in a ballroom or by the fireside; but, my word for it, a man travelling in the desert has other things to think of. Everything is wet and sloppy; the wind catches under his tent before he can get it pinned down; and when it is fastened, and he finds his tight canvass turning the water like a cemented roof, and begins to rub his hands and feel himself comfortable, he finds but the beginning of trouble in a wet mat and coverlet.

I was but poorly prepared for a change like this, for I had been so long used to a clear, unclouded sky, that I almost considered myself beyond the reach of the changing elements. It was the beauty of the weather more than anything else that had tempted me to turn off from the road to Gaza; and, hardly equal to this change of scene, my heart almost sank within me. I reproached myself as if for a wilful and unjustifiable disregard of prudence, and no writer on moral duties could have written a better lecture than I inflicted upon myself that evening. In wet clothes I was literally sitting on the stool of repentance. Drooping and disheartened, I told Paul that I was already punished for my temerity, and the next morning I would go back and resume the road to Gaza. For the night, however, there was but one thing to be done, and that was to sleep if I could, and sleep I did. A man who rides all day upon a dromedary must sleep, come what may, and even thunder among the mountains of Sinai cannot wake him. Daylight brought back my courage; the storm was over; the sun was shining brightly as I ever saw it even in the East; and again there was the same clear and refreshing atmosphere that had beguiled me from my prudent resolution. I too was changed again; and, in answer to the suggestion of Paul, that we should retrace our steps, I pointed towards Akaba, and gave the brief and emphatic order, "Forward!"

We continued for several hours along the valley, which was closely bounded on either side by mountains, not high, but bare,cracked, and crumbling into fragments. The tops had apparently once been lofty and pointed, but time, and the action of the elements, had changed their character. The summits had crumbled and fallen, so as to expose on every side a rounded surface, and the idea constantly present to my mind was, that the whole range had been shaken by an Almighty hand; shaken so as to break the rugged surface of the mountains, but not with sufficient force to dash them into pieces; I could not help thinking that, with another shock, the whole mountain would fall in ruins. I had often remarked the silence and the stillness of the desert; but never had I been so forcibly impressed with this peculiarity as since I left the convent. The idea was constantly present to my mind, "How still, how, almost fearfully still!" The mountains were bare of verdure; there were no shrubs or bushes, and no rustling of the wind, and the quiet was like that of the ocean in a perfect calm, when there is not a breath of air to curl a wave, shake the smallest fold in the lazy sail that hangs useless from the yard. Occasionally we disturbed a hare or a partridge, but we had not met a human being since we left the convent. Once we saw the track of a solitary dromedary, the prints of his feet deeply bedded in the sand, as if urged by one hurrying with hot haste; perhaps some Bedouin robber flying to his tent among the mountains with the plunder of some desert victim; we followed it for more than an hour, and when we lost sight of it on the rocky road, I felt as if we were more lonely than before.

I was thinking what an incident it would be in the life of one used to the hurrying bustle of steamboats and railroads, to travel for through this oldest of countries without meeting a living being; and, as far as I could understand, it might well be so; there was no trade even for small caravans, and years passed by without any person, even an Arab, travelling this road. Toualeb had been over it but once, and that was ten years before, when he accompanied M. Laborde on his way to Petra. I knew that there; were Bedouin tents among,the mountains, but, unless by accident, we might pass through without seeing any of them; and I was speculating on the chances of our not meeting a single creature, when Paul cried out that he saw a woman; and, soon after repeating the exclamation, dismounted and gave chase. Toualeb ran after him, and in another moment or two I caught a glimpse and followed.

I have before mentioned that, among these barren and desolate mountains, there was frequently a small space of ground, near some fountain or deposit of water, known only to the Arabs, capable of producing a scanty crop of grass to pasture a few camels and a small flock of sheep or goats. There the Bedouin pitches his tent, and remains till the scanty product is consumed; and then packs up his household goods, and seeks another pasture-ground. The Bedouins are essentially a pastoral people; their only riches are their flocks and herds, their home is in the wide desert, and they have no local attachments; to-day they pitch their tent among the mountains, to-morrow in the plain; and wherever they plant themselves for the time, all that they have on earth, wife, children, and friends, are immediately around them. In fact, the life of the Bedouin, his appearance and habits, are precisely the same as those of the patriarchs of old. Abraham himself, the first of the patriarchs, was a Bedouin, and four thousand years have not made the slightest alteration in the character and habits of this extraordinary people. Read of the patriarchs in the Bible, and it is the best description you can have of pastoral life in the East at the present day.

The woman whom we had pursued belonged to the tent of a Bedouin not far from our road, but completely hidden from our view; and, when overtaken by Toualeb, she recognised in him a friend of her tribe, and in the same spirit, and almost in the same words which would have been used by her ancestors four thousand years ago, she asked us to her tent, and promised us a lamb or a kid for supper. Her husband was stretched on the ground in front of his tent, and welcomed us with an air and manner that belonged to the desert, but which a king on his throne could not have excelled. He was the imbodied personification of all my conceptions of a patriarch. A large loose frock, a striped handkerchief on his head, bare legs, sandals on his feet, and a long white beard, formed the outward man. Almost immediately after we were seated he took his shepherd's crook, and, assisted by his son, selected a lamb from the flock for the evening meal; and now I would fain prolong the illusion of this pastoral scene. To stop at the door of an Arab's tent, and partake with him of a lamb or kid prepared by his hospitable hands, all sitting together on the ground, and provided with no other implements than those which Nature gave us, is a picture of primitive and captivating simplicity; but the details were such as to destroy for ever all its poetry, and take away all relish for patriarchal feasts. While we were taking coffee the lamb lay bleating in our ears, as if conscious of its coming fate. The coffee drunk and the pipe smoked, our host arose and laid his hand upon the victim; the long sword which he wore over his shoulder was quickly drawn; one man held the head and another the hind legs; and, with a rapidity almost inconceivable, it was killed and dressed, and its smoking entrails, yet curling with life, were broiling on the fire.

I was the guest of the evening, and had no reason to complain of the civility of my entertainer; for, with the air of a well-bred host, and an epicure to boot, he drew from the burning coals one of the daintiest pieces, about a yard and a half in length, and rolling one end between the palms of his hands to a tapering point, broke off about a foot and handed it to me. Now I was by no means dainty. I could live upon the coarsest fare, and all the little luxuries of tables, knives and forks, were of very little moment in my estimation. I was prepared to go full length in this patriarchal feast. But my indifference was not proof against the convivial elegances of my Bedouin companions; and as I saw yard after yard disappear, like long strings of macaroni, down their capacious throats, I was cured of all poetical associations and my appetite together.

In the tent of the Arabian patriarch, woman, the pride, the ornament, and the charm of domestic life, is the mere household drudge. In vain may one listen for her light footstep, or look to find her by the side of her natural lord, giving a richer charm to the hospitality he is extending to a stranger. It would repay one for much of the toil and monotony of a journey in the desert, if, when by chance he found himself at a Bedouin tent, he could be greeted by her sunny smile. Dark and swarthy as she is, and poor and ignorant, it would pay the traveller for many a weary hour to receive his welcome from the lips of an Arabian girl. But this the customs of the tribes forbid. When the stranger approaches the woman retires; and so completely is she accustomed to this seclusion, that, however closely he may watch, he can never catch her even peeping at him from behind a screen or partition of the tent; curiosity, which in civilized life is so universally imputed to the daughters of Eve, seems entirely unknown to the sex in this wild region. Nor is this the worst of her lot. Even when alone the wife of the Bedouin is not regarded as his equal; the holy companionship of wedded life has between them no existence. Even when no guest is present, she never eats with him. I have seen the father and sons sit down together, and when they had withdrawn from the tent, the mother and daughters came in to what was left. Away, then, with all dreams of superior happiness in this more primitive condition of society. Captivating as is the wild idea of roving abroad at will, unfettered by the restraints of law or of conventional observances, the meanest tenant of a log hut in our western prairies has sources of happiness which the wandering Arab can never know. A spirit of perfect weariness and dissatisfaction with the world might drive a man to the desert, and, after having fallen into the indolent and mere animal habits of savage life, he might find it difficult to return to the wholesome restraints and duties of society ; but I am satisfied that it is sheer affectation or ignorance, in which a member of the civilized family sighs, or pretends to sigh, for the imagined delights of an untried freedom. For my own part, I had long been satisfied of this truth, and did not need the cumulative evidence of my visit to the Bedouin's tent. He would have had me sleep under its shelter; but I knew that in all the Bedouin tents there were multitudes of enemies to rest; creatures that murder sleep; and I preferred the solitude of my own.

One word as to the hospitality of the Arabs. I had read beautiful descriptions of its manifestation, and in some way or other had gathered up the notion that the Bedouin would be offended by an offer to reward his hospitality with a price ; but, feeling naturally anxious not to make a blunder on either side of a question so delicate, I applied to my guide Toualeb for information on the subject. His answer was brief and explicit. He said there was no obligation to give or pay, it being the custom of the Bedouins (among friendly tribes) to ask the wayfaring man into his tent, give him food and shelter, and send him on his way in the morning; that I could give or not, as I pleased; but that, if I did not, the hospitable host would wish his lamb alive again; and from the exceeding satisfaction with which that estimable person received my parting gift, I am very sure that in this instance, at least, I did better in taking Toualeb's knowledge of his people for my guide than I should have done by acting upon what I had read in books. It may be that, if I had gone among them poor and friendless, I should have been received in the same manner, and nothing would have been expected or received from me; but I am inclined to think, from what I saw afterward, that in such case the lamb would have been spared for a longer term of existence, and the hospitality confined to a dip into the dish and a mat at the door of the tent.

Early in the morning we left the tent of our Bedouin landlord. We were still among mountains; at every moment a new view presented itself, wild, fanciful, and picturesque; and in the distance was still visible the long range of dark mountains bordering the Red Sea. Our course was now directly for this sea, but the mountain range appeared so contiguous and unbroken that there seemed no way of getting to it but by crossing their rugged summits. There was a way, however; an opening which we could not distinguish at so great a distance, and for some time Toualeb was at a loss. He was so purblind that he could scarcely distinguish me from one of his dark companions, yet he could read the firmament like a book, and mark the proportion of the almost shapeless mountains; but he was uncertain how to hit precisely the opening by which we must pass through. There was no danger of our losing ourselves, and the only hazard was that of wasting a day in the search; but, fortunately, at the commencement of our perplexity, we came upon a Bedouin whose tent was at the foot of the mountain; and, under his instructions, we pushed on with,confidence and ultimate success.

Evening Amusements.-A Trial of the Feeling.-A Disappointment.-A Santon of the Desert.-An Arab Fisherman.-Turkish Costume-A potent Official.-A Comfortless Sick-room.-A Visit from the Sheik.-Interested Friendship.-Akaba.-The El Alouins.-Questionable Piety.

IT was late in the afternoon when our little caravan entered the narrow opening, presenting itself like a natural door between precipitous rocks several hundred feet in height. Passing this, and continuing onward to a vast amphitheatre, or hollow square of lofty rocks, through a larger opening on our left, we again saw the dark waters of the Red Sea. About midway across I dismounted from my dromedary to survey the scene around me; and, among the many of high interest presented to the traveller in the wilderness of Sinai, I remember none more striking and impressive. It was neither so dreary and desolate, nor so wild and terrible as others I had seen, but different from all. The door by which we entered was undistinguishable, the rocks in the background completely closing it to the sight; on all sides except towards the sea, and forming almost a perfect square, were the naked faces of the rock, lofty, smooth, and regular, like the excavated sides of an ancient quarry, and quiet to that extraordinary and indescribable degree of which I have already spoken. Descending towards the opening that led to the sea, directly under us was an extensive and sandy plain, reaching to its very margin; and nearly opposite, rising abruptly from the clear waters, a long unbroken range of stern and rugged mountains, their dark irregular outline finely contrasted with the level surface at their feet, while the sea itself extended on the right and left as far as the eye could reach in that clear atmosphere ; but the first stage of my journey, the head of the gulf, and the little fortress of Akaba, were still invisible.

We rode about an hour along the shore, passing at a distance the tents of some Bedouins; and, about an hour before dark, encamped in a grove of wild palm-trees, so near the sea that the waves almost reached the door of my tent. When the moon rose I walked for an hour along the shore, and, musing upon the new scenes which every day was presenting me, picked up some shells and bits of coral as memorials of the place. I am no star-gazer, but I had learned to look up at the stars; and though I knew most of them merely by sight, I felt an attraction towards them as faces I had seen at home; while the Great Bear with his pointers, and the North Star, seemed my particular friends. returning to my tent, I found my Bedouins, with some strangers from the tents which we had passed, sitting round a fire of the branches of palm-trees, smoking, and telling stories as extravagant as any in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. I sat down with them a few moments, then entered my tent and lay down on my mat on the very shore of the sea, and was lulled to sleep by the gentle murmur of its waters.

In the morning Paul told me that there was a strange Arab outside, who wanted to see me. When we first came down from the mountain on the preceding day, a Bedouin had come out and requested me to turn aside and visit a sick man in his tent. In their perfect ignorance of the healing art, the Arabs believe every stranger to be a hakim; and so great is their confidence in the virtue of medicine, and so great their indifference to the hands from which they receive it, that the path of the traveller is constantly beset with applications from the sick or their friends. I had been so often besought and entreated to cure blindness, deafness, and other maladies beyond even the reach of medical skill, that now I paid little attention to such applications; and when this last request made, after inquiring into the symptoms of the case, I told the messenger that I could do the sick man no good, and passed on. This morning Paul told me that the patient himself had come over during the night, and was then at the door, begging me to cure him. Paul had told him of my utter inability, but he would not be satisfied; and when I went out of my tent he was sitting directly before the door, a thin, ghastly figure; and opening his mouth and attempting an inarticulate jabber, there fell out a tongue so festered to the very throat, that the sight of it made me sick. I told him that it was utterly out of my power to help him; that I knew no more of the healing art than he did himself; and that the only advice I could give him was to endeavour to get to Cairo and put himself under the hands of a physician. I shall never forget the poor fellow's look, and almost blamed myself for not giving him some simple preparation, which might have cheated him, at least for a few days, with the hope that he might escape the tomb to which he was hurrying. His hands fell lifeless by his side, as if he had heard a sentence of death; he gave me a look which seemed to say that it was all my fault, and fell senseless on the ground. His two companions lifted him up; his faithful dromedary kneeled to receive him; and, as he turned away, he cast a reproachful glance towards me, which made me almost imagine myself guilty of his death. I have no doubt that, long before this, the poor Arab is dead, and that in his dying moments, when struggling with the king of terrors, he has seen, in his distracted visions, the figure of the hard-hearted stranger, who, as he thought, might have saved him, but would not.

Anxious to escape an object so painful to my feelings, I walked on, and was soon busily engaged in picking up shells and coral; of the former never saw so many as at this place. Some were particularly beautiful, but exceedingly delicate, and difficult to be carried. The first day I could have loaded a camel with them. The coral, too, such as it was, lay scattered about in lavish profusion. I remember, the first piece Paul found, he rubbed his hands like the toiling and untiring alchymist, when he thinks he has discovered the philosopher's stone; but when he came to a second he threw away the first, in the same spirit in which the Irishman, on his arrival in our country, the El Dorado of his dreams, threw down a sixpence which he had picked up in the street, assuring himself that there was more where that came from. Some of this coral was exceedingly beautiful; we did not know its value, but I did not think very highly of it, merely from the circumstance of its lying there in such abundance. It was not the rock or branch coral, but a light porous substance, resembling very much the honeycomb. Paul gathered a large quantity of it, and contrived to carry it to Jerusalem, though it got very much broken on the way. He had the satisfaction of knowing, however, that he had not sustained any great loss; for, on our first visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, we found in the porch a green-turbaned Mussulman, who, returning from his pilgrimage to Mecca, had thought to indemnify himself for the expense and fatigue of his long and dreary journey with this treasure of the sea. Paul took up a large piece and asked him the price, when the Mussulman, with an air as dejected in telling as was that of Paul in hearing it, told him two paras, a para being about one eighth of a cent; and the next day I saw before the door of the convent at which we were staying a large heap of the coral which Paul had been so careful in carrying; and after that he talked only of his shells, the value of which was not yet ascertained.

At about twelve o'clock, close by the shore, we came to a stunted wild palm-tree, with a small stone fence around it; and, looking down from my dromedary, I saw extended on the ground the figure of an Arab. I at first thought he was dead; but, at the noise of our approach, he raised his head from a stone which served him as a pillow, and the first greeting he gave us was to ask for bread. Among all the habitations of hermits I had yet seen, in caves, among rocks or mountains, there was none which could be compared with this by the shore of the sea; a small fence, but little higher than his recumbent body, protected him from the wind; the withered branches of the palm-tree were his only covering; his pillow a stone, and the bare earth his bed; and when he crawled out and stood before us, erect as age and infirmity would allow, I thought I had never seen such a miserable figure. I could not have believed, without seeing it, that anything so wretched, made in God's image, existed on the earth. He was more than sixty; his face was dried, and seamed with the deep wrinkles of age and exposure; his beard long and white; and his body thin to emaciation. Over his shoulders and breast was a miserable covering of rags, but the rest of his body was perfectly naked; his skin was dry, horny, and covered with blotches resembling large scales, which, on his legs, and particularly over his knees, stood out like the greaves of an ancient coat of mail; and he looked like one who literally crawled on his belly and licked the dust of the earth. He reminded me of the wild hermit of Engaddi, who came out upon the Saracen emir when he journeyed with the Knight of the Leopard on the shore of the Dead Sea. And this man was a saint, and my Arabs looked on him with respect and reverence; and when he died a public tomb would be erected over him, and they upon whose charity he now lived would resort to it as a shrine of prayer. We gave him some bread, and left him in his solitary den; and before we hd got out of sight, he had crawled back under his palm-leaves, and was again resting upon his pillow of stone. In our busy and stirring world, we cannot imagine the possibility of existing in such a dronish state; but, in all probability, that man would lie there till the bread we gave him was exhausted, and, when he had taken his last morsel, again lie down in hope that more would come.

About an hour afterward we came upon a fisherman stealing along the shore with his net in his hand, looking into the sea, and ready to throw it when he saw any fish. The process, like everything else that one sees here, is perfectly primitive, and carries the beholder back to the early days of this ancient country. Carrying the net or his left arm crooked, cleared and prepared for a throw, with the one end in his right hand, ant taking advantage of ripples made by the wind, and the sun throwing his shadow behind him, he runs along the shore until he sees a school of fish, when, with a gentle jerk, and without any noise, he throws his net, which opens and spreads as it falls, so that a little thing, which could be put easily into a hat, expands sufficiently to cover a surface of twenty or thirty feet. While running along with us he threw several times; and, as he managed his craft with skill, never throwing until he saw something, he was always successful. I could not make anything out of the Arabic name of the fish; but I have the flavour of them still on my tongue; a flavour at the moment finer than that of the sole or turbot of Paris, or the trout of Long Island.

In the afternoon the weather changed. Since we first struck the sea, our road along hits shore had been one of uncommon beauty, and my time passed very pleasantly, sometime's allowing my dromedary to cool his feet in the clear water, sometimes dismounting to pick up a shell, and all the time having a warm sun and a refreshing breeze; but it was my fortune to see this ancient country under every hue of the changing elements. The sun was now obscured; a strong wind came down the sea directly in our teeth; the head of the gulf was cut off from our view; the sea troubled, and the white caps were dancing on its surface; the dark mountains looked darker and more lonely; ,While before us a rainbow was forming over the point of Akaba which threw itself across the gulf to the east, marking the firmament, with its rich and varied colours, the figure the crescent. Soon after we were in the midst of a perfect hurricane. Several times during the day I had wished to float upon the bosom of the tranquil sea, and had looked vain for some boat or fisherman's skiff to carry me up the gulf; but I now shrank from the angry face of the deep, and, under the shelter of an impending rock, listened to the whistling of the wind and the crashing of the thunder among the mountains.

In the morning the storm was over, and the atmosphere pure, clear, and refreshing as before; but, as a set-off to the pleasure of returning sunshine, Toualeb told me that we had passed the boundaries of the friendly tribes, and that we must look to our weapons, for we were now among strangers, and perhaps enemies. Here, too, for the first time, I put on my Turkish dress, being that of a merchant of Cairo, with the addition of pistols and sabre; but, fearful of taking cold, I cut down an old coat and tied up a pair of pantaloons, so as to have a complete suit under the large white trousers and red silk gown which formed the principal items of my dress. The red tarbouch I had worn ever since I had been in Egypt; but I now rolled round it a green and yellow striped handkerchief, to which Toualeb gave the proper twist; and, with my yellow slippers and red shoes over them, sash, pistols, sword, and long -beard, I received the congratulations and compliments of my friends upon my improved appearance.

Indeed, I played the Turk well. Different from my notions of the appearance of the Turk, they have generally light and florid complexions; and, if I could have talked their language, dressed as a Turk, they could not have judged from my appearance that I had ever been outside the walls of old Stamboul. There is no exaggeration in the unanimous reports of travellers of the effect which the costumes of the East give to personal appearance; and, having seen and known it even in my own person, I am inclined to believe that there is fallacy, in the equally prevalent opinion of the personal beauty of the Turks. Their dress completely hides all deformity of person, and the variety of colours, the arms and the long beard, divert the attention of the observer from a close examination of features. The striking effect of costume is strongly perceptible in the soldiers of the sultan, and the mongrel, half European uniform in which he has put them, and in which they are not by any means an uncommonly fine-looking set of men. These soldiers are taken wherever they are caught, and, consequently, are a fair specimen of the Turkish race; and any English regiment will turn out finer men than the best in the sultan's army. Following my example, Paul also slipped into his Bedouin shirt, and could hardly be distinguished from the best Arab of them all.

Again our road lay along the shore, so near that some. times we had to dismount and pick our way over the rocks, and at others our dromedaries bathed their feet in the water. In one place the side of the mountain rose so directly and abruptly from the water's edge, that we had to turn aside and pass around it, coming again to the shore after about an hour's ride. Here we saw the gulf narrowing towards its extremity; and on the opposite side a cluster of palm. trees, within which, and completely hidden from view, was the end of our first stage, the fortress of Akaba. Never was the sight of one of the dearest objects on earth, home to the wanderer, land to the sailor, or a mistress to the lover, more welcome than the sight of those palm-trees to me. The malady under which I had been labouring had grown upon me every day; and, in spite of all that was rich and interesting, time after time I had regretted my rashness in throwing myself so far into the desert. The repose, therefore, which awaited me at Akaba seemed the most precious thing on earth.

Towards evening we could see Akaba more distinctly, though still on the opposite side of the gulf, and still at a formidable distance to me. A brisk trot would have carried me there in an hour; but this was more than I could bear, supported as I was by a mattress on each side of me, and barely able to sustain the slow and measured movement of a walk. Night was again coming on, and heavy clouds were gathering in the east. I was extremely anxious to sleep within the fortress that night; and, fearful that a stranger would not be admitted after dark, I sent Paul on ahead with my compliments to the governor, and the modest request that he would keep the gates open till I came.

A governor is a governor all the world over. Honour and respect attend him wherever he may be; whether the almost regal governor-general of India, the untitled chief magistrate of our own democratic state, or the governor of a little fortress on the shores of the Red Sea. But there, are some governors one may take a liberty with, and others not; and of the former class was my friend of Akaba. His name was Suliman, his title aga, and therefore he was called Suliman Aga. He had his appointment by favovr of the pacha, and permission to retain it by favour of the Bedouins around; he had under him nominally a garrison of Mogrebbin soldiers, but they were as restiff as some of our own unbroken militia; and, like many a worthy disciplinarian among us, he could do just as he pleased with them if he only let them have their own way. He was, in short, an excellent governor, and I gave him two dollars and a recommendation at parting.

But I am going too fast. I arrived before dark, and in such a state that I almost fell from my dromedary in dismounting at the gate of the fortress. The first glance told me that this was not the place of rest I had promised myself. Half a dozen Mogrebbins from the shores of Morocco, the most tried and faithful of the hired troops of the pacha, were sitting on a mat within the gate, smoking their long pipes, with their long guns, swords, and pistols hanging above their heads. They rose and gave me a seat beside them, and the whole of the little population of the fortress, and the Bedouins living under the palm-trees outside, gathered around to gaze at the stranger. The great caravan of pilgrims for Mecca had left them only three days before; and, except upon the passing and return of the caravan, years pass by without a stranger ever appearing at the fortress. They had heard of my coming, for the sheik had waited two days after the departure of the caravan, and had only gone that morning, leaving directions with the governor to send for him as soon as I arrived. I was somewhat surprised at his confidence in my coming, for, when I saw him, I was very far from being decided; but in the miserable condition in which I found myself, I hailed it as a favourable omen. The governor soon came, and was profuse in his offers of service, beginning, of course, with coffee and a pipe, which I was forced to decline, apologizing on the ground of my extreme indisposition, and begged to be conducted to a room by myself. The governor rose and conducted me, and every Bedouin present followed after; and when I came to the room by myself, I had at least forty of them around me. Once Paul prevailed on some of them to go out; but they soon came back again, and I was too ill to urge the matter.

The very aspect of the room into which I was shown prostrated the last remains of my physical strength. It was eighty or a hundred feet long, forty feet wide, and about as many high, having on one side a dead wall, being that of the fortress, and on the other two large windows without shutters and the door; the naked floor was of mud, and so were the walls and ceiling. I looked for one spot less cheerless than the rest ; and finding at the upper end a place where the floor was elevated about a foot, with a feeling of despondency I have seldom known, I stretched my mattress in the extreme corner, and. too far gone to have any regard to the presence of the governor or his Arab soldiers, threw myself at full length upon it. I was sick in body and soul; for, besides the actual and prostrating debility under which I was labouring, I had before me the horrible certainty that I was completely cut off from all medical aid, and from all the comforts which a sick man wants. I was ten days from Cairo; to go there in person was impossible; and, if I should send, I could not obtain the aid of a physician in less than twenty-five or thirty days, if at all; and before that I might be past his help. When I left Cairo Dr. Walne had set me up, so that I held out tolerably well until I reached Mount Sinai'; and, moreover, had given me sundry medicines, with directions for their use under particular circumstances; but my symptoms had so completely changed, that the directions, if not the medicines themselves, were entirely useless. In a spirit of desperation, however, I took them out; and, not knowing where to begin, resolved to go through the whole catalogue in such order as chance might direct. I began with a double dose of cathartic powders; and, while lying on my mat, I was diverted from the misery of my own gloomy reflections by the pious conversation of the Mussulman governor. If God willed, he said, I would soon get well; himself and his wife had been ill three months, and had no physician, but God willed that they should recover, and they did; and as I looked in his believing face and those of the Bedouins, I found myself gradually falling into the fatalism of their creed. I shall never forget the manner in which I passed that night, and the sombre fancies that chased each other through my brain. A single lamp threw a dim and feeble light through the large apartment, scarcely revealing the dusky forms of the sleeping Bedouins, with their weapons by their sides, and I was the only one awake. Busy memory called up all the considerations that ought to have prevented my taking such a journey, and the warning voice of my friend at Cairo, "turn your steps westward," again rang in my ears. I saw the figure of the dead Tartar at Suez, like me, a wanderer from home, and buried by strangers in the sandy desert; and so nervous and desponding had I become, that the words of the prophet in regard to the land of Idumea, "none shall pass through it for ever and ever," struck upon my heart like a funeral knell. I was now upon the borders of Edom; and, in the despondency of sickness, I looked upon myself as rash and impious in undertaking what might be considered a defiance of the prophetic denunciations inspired by God himself.

In the morning I was worse; and, following up my almost desperate plan of treatment, commenced the day with a double emetic. The governor came in; and though I tried to keep the door shut, another and another followed, till my room was as public as any part of the fortress. Indeed, it was by far. the most public, for all the rest was stripped of its bronzed figures to ornament my room. Annoyed to death by seeing twenty or thirty pairs of fiery black eyes constantly fixed upon me, I remembered, with feelings of envy, my tent in the desert. There I could at least be alone, and I resolved, at all hazards, not to pass another night in the fortress.

In the midst of my exceeding perplexities, the sheik of Akaba, my friend of Cairo, made his appearance. I was in a pitiable condition when he entered, under the immediate operation of my emetic, with the whole of the Mogrebbin guard and every beggarly Bedouin about the fortress staring at me. He looked surprised and startled when he saw me; but, with a glimmering of good sense, though, as I thought, with unnecessary harshness, told me that I would die if I stayed there, and that he was ready to set out with me at a moment's notice. By the advice of Mr. Gliddon, my plan had been to make this my place of negotiation and arrangement, and not to proceed farther without having all things definitely explained and settled. But I was in no condition to negotiate, and was ready to do anything to get away from the fortress. He was exceedingly anxious to start immediately, and gave me a piece of information that almost lifted me from the ground; namely, that he could provide me with a horse of the best blood of Arabia for the whole of the journey. He could not have given me more grateful intelligence, for the bare idea of again mounting my dromedary deprived me of all energy and strength. I had endeavoured to procure a sort of palanquin, to be swung between two camels ; but so destitute was the fortress of all kinds of material, that it was impossible to make it. When he spoke to me, then, of a horse, it made me a new man; and, without a moment's hesitation, I told him that if he would give me till five o'clock in the afternoon, I would be ready to set out with him. One thing I did not like. I wished and designed to take with me my faithful Toualeb; but he had told me that he did not believe that the El Alouins would allow it; and, when he spoke to the sheik, he latter had positively refused, pretending that all was arranged between us at Cairo. I was fain, therefore, to abandon the idea, not having energy to insist upon anything that was disputed, and to trust everything to fortune and the sheik. I told Paul to do all that was necessary; and, begging to be left alone for a few hours, I laid myself down upon my mat, and, worn out with the watching of the last night, and the excitement of thinking and deciding on my future movements, quickly fell asleep. P> At five o'clock the sheik returned, punctual to his appointment; I had slept soundly, and awoke somewhat refreshed. The room was again filled with the Bedouins, and I was as ready to go as he was to take me. He had ordered what was necessary upon the journey for man and beast, and provisions for six camels and ten men for ten days. I gave Paul my purse, and told him to pay, and, walking to the gate of the fortress, a dozen Arabs helped me to my saddle; they would have taken me up in their arms and carried me, and, when I had mounted, they would have taken up the horse and carried him too, so great a friendship had they already conceived for me. But the friendship was not for what I was, but for what I had. They had welcomed me as they would have welcomed a bag of gold; and I had scarcely mounted before they all, governor, Mogrebbin soldiers, and Bedouins, began to clamour for bucksheesh. Ten years before, M. Laborde had passed along this route, and stopped at the fortress while waiting for the sheik who was to guide and protect him to Petra; and having in view the purpose of preparing the great work which has since given him such merited reputation, he had scattered money and presents with a most liberal hand. M. Laborde himself was not personally known to any of those now at the fortress; but his companion, Mr. Linant, of whom I have before spoken, was known to them all; and they all had heard of the gold shower in which M. Laborde appeared among them. They therefore expected the same from me; and, when Paul had got through his distribution, I was startled at perceiving the dissatisfied air with which they received a bucksheesh that would have overwhelmed any other Arabs with joy and gratitude.

But I must not hurry the reader from Akaba with the same eagerness which I displayed in leaving it. This little fortress is seldom visited by travellers, and it is worth a brief description. It stands at the extremity of the eastern or Elanitic branch of the Red Sea, at the foot of the sandstone mountains, near the shore, and almost buried in a grove of palm-trees, the only living things in that region of barren sands. It is the last stopping-place of the caravan of pilgrims on its way to Mecca, being yet thirty days' journey from the tomb of the Prophet, and, of course, the first at which they touch on their return. Except at the time of these two visits, the place is desolate from the beginning of the year to its close; the arrival of a traveller is of exceedingly rare occurrence, and seldom does even the wandering Bedouin stop within its walls; no ship rides in its harbour, and not even a solitary fishing-boat breaks the stillness of the water at its feet. But it was not always so desolate, for this was the Ezion-geber of the Bible, where, three thousand years ago, King Solomon made a navy of ships, which brought from Ophir gold and precious stones for the great temple at Jerusalem; and again, at a later day, a great city existed here, through which, at this distant point in the wilderness, the wealth of India was conveyed to imperial Rome. But all these are gone, and there are no relics or monuments to tell of former greatness; like the ships which once floated off the harbour, all have passed away. Still, ruined and desolate as it is, to the eye of feeling the little fortress is not without its interest; for, as the governor told me, it was built by the heroic Saladin.

I had taken leave of my trusty Toualeb, and was again in the hands of strangers; and I do not deceive myself when I say, that on the very borders of Edom I noticed a change for the worse in the appearance of the Bedouins. According to the reports of travellers and writers, those with whom I now set out from Akaba belonged to one of the most lawless tribes of a lawless race; and they were by far the wildest and fiercest-looking of all I had yet seen; with complexions bronzed and burnt to blackness; dark eyes, glowing with a fire approaching to ferocity; figures thin and shrunken, though sinewy; chests standing out, and ribs projecting from the skin, like those of a skeleton. The sheik like myself, was on horseback, dressed in a red silk gown like my own, and over it a large cloak of scarlet cloth both the gifts of Messieurs Linant and Laborde; a red, tarbouch with a shawl rolled round it, long red boots, and a sash; and carried pistols, a sword, and a spear about twelve feet long, pointed with steel at both ends; his brother, too, wore a silk gown, and carried, pistols and sword, and the rest were armed with swords and matchlock guns, and wore the common Bedouin dress; some of them almost no dress at all. We had moved some distance from the fortress without a word being uttered, for they neither spoke to me nor with each other. I was in no humour for talking myself, but it was unpleasant to have more than a dozen men around, all bending their keen eyes upon me, and. not one of them uttering a word. With a view to making some approach to acquaintance, and removing their jealousy of me as a stranger, I asked some casual question about the road; but I might better have held my peace, for it seemed that I could not well have hit upon a subject more displeasing. My amiable companions looked as black as midnight, and one of them, a particularly swarthy and truculent-looking fellow, turned short round, and told me that I had too much curiosity, and that he did not understand what right a Christian had to come there and hunt up their villages, take down their names, &c. But the sheik came in as mediator, and told them that I was a good man; that he had. been to my house in Cairo, and that I was no spy; and so this cloud passed off. I did not mean to go far that afternoon, for I had left the fortress merely to get rid of the crowd, and return to fresh air and quiet; and in less than an hour I again pitched my tent in the desert. Finding plenty of brush, we kindled a large fire, and all sat down around, it. It was a great object with me to establish myself on a good footing with my companions at the outset; and, more fortunate on my second attempt, before one round of coffee and pipes was over the sheik turned to me, and, with all the extravagance of Eastern hyperbole, said he thanked God for having permitted us again to see each other's face, and that I had been recovering since I saw his face; and, turning his eyes to heaven, with an expression of deep and confiding piety, he added, "God grant that you may soon become a strong man;" and then the others all took their pipes from their mouths, and, turning up their eyes to heaven, the whole band of breechless desperadoes added, "Wullah-Wullah," "God grant it." .

Prophecy and Fulfillment.-Unpleasant Suggestions.-The Denounced Land.-Management.-A Rencounter.--An Arab's Cunning.-The Camel's Hump.-Adventure with a Lamb.-Mount Hor.-Delicate Negotiations.-Approach to Petra.

I HAD now crossed the borders of Edom. Standing near the shore of the Elanitic branch of the Red Sea, the doomed and accursed land lay stretched out before me, the theatre of awful visitations and their more awful fulfillment; given to Esau as being of the fatness of the earth, but now a barren waste, a picture of death, an eternal monument of the wrath of an offended God, and a fearful witness to the truth of the words spoken by his prophets. "For my sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold, it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment." "From generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever. But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it; and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion and the stones of emptiness. They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing. And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof : and it shall be a habitation of dragons, and a court for owls. The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow: the screech-owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest. There shall the great owl make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow: there shall the vultures also be gathered, every one with her mate. Seek ye out the book of the Lord, and read: no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate: for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them. And he hath cast the lot for them, and his hand hath divided it unto them by line: they shall possess it for ever; from generation to generation shall they dwell therein."-Isaiah xxxiv.

I read in the sacred book prophecy upon prophecy and curse upon curse against the very land on which I stood. I was about to journey through this land, and to see with my own eyes whether the Almighty had stayed his uplifted arm, or whether his sword had indeed come down "upon Idumea, and the people of his curse, to judgment." I have before referred to Keith on the Prophecies, where, in illustrating the fulfillment of the prophecies against Idumea, "none shall pass through it for ever and ever," after referring to the singular fact that the great caravan routes existing in the days of David and Solomon, and under the Roman empire, are now completely broken up, and that the great hadji routes to Mecca from Damascus and Cairo lie along the borders of Idumea, barely touching and not passing through it, he proves by abundant references that to this day no traveller has ever passed through the land.

The Bedouins who roam over the land of Idumea have been described by travellers as the worst of their race. "The Arabs about Akaba," says Pococke, "are a very bad people and notorious robbers, and are at war with all others." Mr. Joliffe alludes to it as one of the wildest and most dangerous divisions of Arabia; and Burckhardt says, "that for the first time he had ever felt fear during his travels in the desert, and his route was the most dangerous he had ever travelled," that he had "nothing with him that could attract the notice or excite the cupidity of the Bedouins," and was "even stripped of some rags that covered his wounded ankles." Messrs. Legh and Banks, and Captains Irby and Mangles, were told that the Arabs of Wady Moussa, the tribe that formed my escort, "were a most savage and treacherous race, and that they would use their Frank's blood for a medicine;" and they learned on the spot that "upward of thirty pilgrims from Barbary had been murdered at Petra the preceding year by the men of Wady Moussa ;" and they speak of the opposition and obstruction from the Bedouins as resembling the case of the Israelites under Moses, when Edom refused to give them passage through his country. None of these had passed through it, and unless the two Englishmen and Italian before referred to succeeded in their attempt, when I pitched my tent on the borders of Edoin no traveller had ever done so. The ignorance and mystery that hung over it added to the interest with which I looked to the land of barrenness and desolation stretched out before me; and I would have regarded all the difficulties and dangers of the road merely as materials for a not unpleasant excitement, if I had only felt a confidence in my physical strength to carry me through. But some idea may be formed of my unhappy condition from the circumstance that, in the evening, my servant, an honest and faithful fellow, who, I believe, was sincerely attached to me, while I was lying on my mat, with many apologies, and hoping I would not think hard of him, and praying that no accident might happen to me, told me that he was a poor man, and it would be very hard for him to lose his earnings, and that an English traveller had died in Syria the year before, and his consul had taken possession of his effects, and to this day his poor servant, had never received his wages. I at first thought it unkind of him to come upon me at that moment with such a suggestion; but I soon changed my mind. I had not paid him a cent since he had been with me, and his earnings were no trifle to him; and, after all, what was I to him except a debtor? In any event I should leave him in a few months, and, in all probability, should never see him again. I told him that he knew the circumstances under which we had left Cairo; that I had brought with me barely enough to pay my expenses on the road; nor could I give him what he wanted, an order upon my consul at Beyrout; but, after he had gone out, with somewhat the same feelings that may be supposed to possess a man in extremis writing his own will, I wrote an order, including a gratuity which he richly deserved, upon a merchant in Beyrout, upon whom I had a letter of credit; but the cheerlessness and helplessness of my situation never struck me so forcibly as when I reflected that, in the uncertain position in which I was placed, it was not prudent to give it into his hands. At that moment I mistrusted everybody; and, though I had not then, nor at any subsequent time, the slightest reason to doubt his faith, I did not dare to let him know that he could in any event be a gainer by my death. I considered it necessary to make him suppose that his interest was identified with my safety, and therefore folded up the paper, enclosed it in the letter of credit directed to the merchant, and put it back in my trunk; and I need not say that it was a great satisfaction to me that the validity of the draught was never tested.

When I awoke in the morning, the first thing I thought of was my horse. It almost made me well to think of him, and it was not long before I was on his back.

Standing near the shore of this northern extremity of the Red Sea, I saw before me an immense sandy valley, which, without the aid of geological science, to the eye of common observation and reason, had once been the bottom of a sea or the bed of a river. This dreary valley, extending far beyond the reach of the eye, had been partly explored by Burckhardt; sufficiently to ascertain and mention it in the latest geography of the country, as the great valley of El Ghor, extending from the shores of the Elanitic gulf to the southern extremity of the Lake Asphaltites or the Dead Sea; and it was manifestly landmarks of Nature's own providing, that over that sandy plain those seas had once mingled their waters, or, perhaps more probably, that before the cities of the plain had been consumed by brimstone and fire, and Sodom and Gomorrah covered by a pestilential lake, the Jordan had here rolled its waters. The valley varied from four to eight miles in breadth, and on each side were high, dark, and barren mountains, bounding it like a wall. On the left were the mountains of Judea, and on the right those of Seir, the portion given to Esau as an inheritance ; and among them, buried from the eves of strangers, the approach to it known only to the wandering Bedouins, was the ancient capital of his kingdom, the excavated city of Petra, the cursed and blighted Edom of the Edomites. The land of Idumea lay before me, in barrenness and desolation; no trees grew in the valley, and no verdure on the mountain-tops. All was bare, dreary, and desolate.

But the beauty of the weather atoned for this barrenness of scene; and, mounted on the back of my Arabian, I felt a lightness of frame and an elasticity of spirit that I could not have believed possible in my actual state of health. Patting the neck of the noble animal, I talked with the sheik about his home; and, by warm and honest praises, was rapidly gaining upon the affections of my wild companions. The sheik told me that the race of these horses had been in his family more than four hundred years, though I am inclined to think, from his not being able to tell his own age, that he did not precisely know the pedigree of his beasts. If anything connected with my journey in the East could throw me into ecstasies, it would be the recollection of that horse. I felt lifted up when on his back, and snuffed the pure air of the desert with a zest not unworthy of a Bedouin. Like all the Arabian.horses, he was broken only to the walk and gallop, the unnatural and ungraceful movement of a trot being deemed unworthy the free limbs of an Arab courser.

The sheik to-day was more communicative. Indeed, he became very fond of talking; suspicious as I was, and on the watch for anything that might rouse my apprehensions, I observed that he regularly settled down upon the same topics, namely, the dangers of the road, the bad character of the Arabs, his great friendship for me the first moment he saw me, and his determination to protect me with his life against all dangers. This was well enough for once or twice, but he repeated it too often, and overshot the mark, as I did when I first began to recommend myself to them. I suspected him of exaggerating the dangers of the road to enhance the value of his services; and, lest I should entertain any doubt upon the subject, he betrayed himself by always winding up with a reference to the generosity of Monsieur Linant. The consequence was, that, instead of inspiring me with fear, he gave me confidence; and, by the end of my first day's journey, I had lost nearly all apprehensions of the dangers of the road, and acquired some distrust and contempt for my protector. We were all getting along very well, however. Paul had been playing a great game among the men, and, by his superior: knowledge of mankind, easily circumvented these ignorant Bedouins; and his Arabic name of "Osman" was constantly in some one's mouth. I forgot to mention that, very early in my journey in the desert, my companions, unable to twist my name to suit their Arabic intonations, had called me Abdel Hasis (literally, the slave of the good God), and Paul, Osman.

In the evening, while making a note in a little memorandum-book, and on the point of lying down to sleep, I heard a deep guttural voice at some distance outside, and approaching nearer, till the harsh sounds grated as if spoken in my very ears. My Bedouins were sitting around a large fire at the door of the tent, and through the flames I saw coming up two wild and ferocious-looking Arabs, their dark visages reddened by the blaze, and their keen eyes flashing; and hardly had they reached my men, before all drew their swords, and began cutting away at each other with all their might. I did not feel much apprehension, and could not but admire the boldness of the fellows; two men walking up deliberately and drawing upon ten. One of the first charges Toualeb gave me on my entrance into the desert was, if the Arabs composing my escort got into any quarrel, to keep out of the way and let them fight it out by themselves; and, in pursuance of this advice, without making any attempt to interfere, I stood in the door watching the progress of the fray. The larger of the two was engaged with the sheik's brother, and their swords were clashing in a way that would soon have put an end to one of them, when the sheik, who had been absent at the moment, sprang in among them, and knocking up their swords with his long spear, while his scarlet cloak fell from his shoulders, his dark face reddened, and his black eyes glowed in the firelight, with a voice that drowned the clatter of the weapons, roared- out a volley of Arabic gutturals which made them drop their points, and apparently silenced them with shame. What he said we did not know; but the result was a general cessation of hostilities. The sheik's brother had received a cut in the arm, and his adversary helped to bind up the wound, and they all sat down together round the fire to pipes and coffee, as good friends as a party of Irishmen with their heads broken after a Donnybrook fairing. I had noticed, in this flurry, the exceeding awkwardness with which they used their swords, by their overhand blows constantly laying themselves open, so that any little Frenchman with his toothpick of a rapier would have run them through before they could have cried quarter. After the thing was all over, Paul went out and asked the cause ; but the sheik told him that it was an affair of their own and with this satisfactory answer we were obliged to rest content.

Though all was now quiet, the elements of discord were still existing. The new-comer was a ferocious fellow; his voice was constantly heard, like the hoarse croaking of some bird of evil omen, and sometimes it was raised to the pitch of high and deadly passion. Paul heard him ask if I was a European, to which the sheik answered no; I was a Turk. He then got upon the railroad to Suez, and the poor benighted Bedouin, completely behind the age in the march of improvement, having never read Say's Political Economy or Smith's Wealth of Nations, denounced it as an invasion of the natural rights of the people, and a wicked breaking up of the business of the camel-drivers. He cursed every European that ever set foot in their country; and, speaking of Mr. Galloway, the engineer of the proposed railroad, hoped that he might some day meet him, and swore he would strangle him with his own hands.

-In the morning we were again under way. Our quarrelsome friend of the night before was by our side, perched on the bare back of a dromedary, and, if possible, looking more grim and savage by daylight. His companion was mounted behind him, and he kept near the sheik, occasionally crossing my path, looking back at me, and croaking in the sheik's ears as he had done the night before. Two or three times he crossed my path, as if with the intention of going into the mountains; and then, as if he found it impossible to tear himself away, returned to the sheik. At length he did go, and with a most discontented and disconsolate air; and after he had gone, the sheik told us that, when they came up to the fire, they demanded tribute or bucksheesh from the stranger passing over the Bedouins' highway; that his brother had refused to pay it, which had been the cause of the quarrel ; and that, when he himself came up, he had told the demanders of tribute that he had undertaken to protect me from injury through the desert; that he had given his head to Mohammed Aly for my safety, and would defend me with his life against every danger; but that, finally, he had pacified them by giving them a couple of dollars apiece. I did not believe this. They looked too disconsolate when they went away; for the four dollars would have made the hearts of two beggarly Bedouins leap for joy; and I could not help asking him if we were obliged to buy our peace when only two came upon us, what we should do when a hundred should come; to which be answered that they must all be paid, and that it was impossible to pass through the desert without it.

We got through the day remarkably well, the scene being always precisely the same; before us, the long, desolate, sandy valley, and on each side the still more desolate and dreary mountains. Towards evening we encamped; and, after sitting some time around a fire with my companions, I entered my tent. Soon after, the sheik, in pursuance of is pitiful plan of exciting my fears and raising his own value, sent in for my gun and pistols, telling me that there were Arabs near; that he heard the barking of a dog, and intended to keep watch all night. I had already seen so much of him, that I knew this was a mere piece of braggadocio; and I met it with another, by telling him that no man could use my pistols better than myself, and that all he had to do was, upon the first alarm, to give me notice, and I would be among them. About an hour afterward I went out and found them all asleep; and I could not help making Paul rouse the sheik, and ask him if he did not want the pistols for his vigilant watch.

In the morning we started at half past six. The day was again beautiful and inspiriting: my horse and myself had become the best friends in the world: and, though I was disgusted with the sheik's general conduct, I moved quietly along the valley, conversing with him or Paul, or with any of the men, about anything that happened to suggest itself. I remember I had a long discourse about the difference between the camel and the dromedary. Buffon gives the camel two humps, and the dromedary one; and this, I believe, is the received opinion, as it had always been mine but, since I had been in the East, I had remarked that it was exceedingly rare to meet a camel with two humps. I had seen together at one time, on the starting of the caravan of pilgrims to Mecca, perhaps twenty thousand camels and dromedaries, and had not seen among them more than half a dozen with two humps. Not satisfied with any explanation from European residents or travellers, I had inquired among the Bedoins; and Toualeb, my old guide, brought up among camels had given such a strange account that I never paid any regard to it. Now, however, the sheik told me the same thing, namely, that they were of different races, the dromedary being to the camel as the blood-horse is to the cart-horse; and that the two humps were peculiar neither to the dromedary nor the camel, or natural to either; but that both are always born with only one hump, which, being a mere mass of flesh, and very tender, almost as soon as the young camel is born a piece is sometimes cut out of the middle for the convenience of better arranging the saddle; and, being cut out of the centre, a hump is left on either side of the cavity; and this, according to the account given by Toualeb, is the only way in which two humps ever appear on the back of a camel or dromedary. I should not mention this story if I had heard it only once; but, precisely as I had it from Toualeb, it was confirmed with a great deal of circumstantial detail by another Bedouin, who, like himself, had lived among camels and dromedaries all his life; and his statement was assented to by all his companions. I do not give this out as a discovery made at this late day in regard to an animal so well known as the camel; indeed, I am told that the Arabs are not ignorant of that elegance of civilized life called "quizzing" I give it merely to show how I whiled away my time in the desert, and for what it is worth.

Towards midday the sheik dashed across the plain, with his long lance poised in his hand, and his scarlet dress streaming in the wind; and about an hour afterward we came to his spear stuck in the sand, and a little Bedouin boy sitting by it to invite us to his father's tent. We turned aside, and, coming to the tent, found the sheik sitting on the ground refreshing himself with long draughts of goat's milk. He passed the skin to us; but, as master of the ceremonies, he declined the regular Arab invitation to stay and eat a lamb. He could not, however, neglect the goods the gods provided, and told our host that we would take a lamb with us for our evening meal. The lamb was caught, and, with his legs tied, was thrown into a sack, where he made music for us for the rest of the day. To the Bedouin, next to the pleasure of eating a lamb is that of knowing he has one to eat ; and so the bleating of the doomed innocent was merely a whetter of appetite. After we had gone some distance from the tent, we set down the lamb on the ground, and I never saw a creature so perfectly the emblem of helplessness. At first he ran back a little way from us; then stopped; and apparently feeling the loneliness of his condition, returned and followed us, and in a few moments was under the feet of the camels, a part of our caravan unwittingly moving to the slaughter. The tent was hardly pitched before he lay bleeding on the ground; and the fire was no sooner kindled than his entrails, liver, &c., were in the burning brush; and in a few moments the Arabs were greedily devouring the meal into which he had been so speedily converted. The whole scene which I have before described was repeated; and, as before, in the morning the skin was the only part of the lamb to be seen.

One thing in the sheik was particularly disagreeable. He was constantly talking with Paul about the sacrifice he made in accompanying me; his confident expectation that I would pay him well for it, and the generosity of Mr. Linant; aIrways winding up with asking what bucksheesh I intended to give him. Paul told me all that passed, and it was evident that the sheik and his men were making extravagant calculations. I had estimated with Mr. Gliddon the probable expenses to Jerusalem, founded on the rate of hire for camels which the sheik had named at Cairo; and as it was not beyond the range of possibilities that I should be stripped on the way, I had brought with me barely enough to cover my probable expenses; and, consequently, I saw that my means were very likely to fall short of the sheik's expectations. I did not want any disappointment at the last, and that night called him to my tent, resolved upon coming to an understanding. I told him that, knowing it was a dangerous road, and that I was subject to the risk of being robbed, I had brought with me a specific sum of money, all of which I intended, for him, and that all he scattered along the road would be so much taken from his own pocket in the end. He was evidently startled, and expressed his surprise that a howaga, or gentleman, should have any bottom to his pocket but promised to economize in future.

The next day the general features of the scene were the same, eternal barrenness and desolation; and, moving to the right, at one o'clock we were at the foot of the mountains of Seir; and towering above all the rest, surmounted by a circular dome, like the tombs of the sheiks in Egypt, was the bare and rugged summit of Mount Hor, the burial-place of Aaron, visible in every direction at a great distance from below, and on both sides the great range of mountains, and forming one of the marks by which the Bedouin regulates his wanderings in the desert. Soon after we turned in among the mountains, occasionally passing small spots of verdure, strangely contrasting with the surrounding and general desolation. Towards evening, in a small mountain on our left, we saw an excavation in the rock, which the sheik said had been a fortress; and, as of every other work of which the history is unknown, its construction was ascribed to the early Christians. It was a beautiful afternoon; gazelles were playing in the valleys, and partridges running wild up the sides of the mountains, and we pitched our tent partly over a carpet of grass, with the door open to the lofty tomb of the great high-priest of Israel.

In the evening the sheik came to my tent for money, having been very pertinacious on that tender subject all day with Paul, asking him how much he thought I had with me, and how much I intended to give him. He began by asking me for pay for the camels, at the price agreed upon in Cairo. If he had asked me before starting from Akaba, I should probably have paid him; but, after what I had seen, and what had passed between him and Paul, I did not like his asking for it now. He told me, too, that we were now at the door of Petra, and that it would be necessary to pay a bucksheesh or tribute on entering, but he could not tell how much would be required, as that would depend altogether on circumstances. There was always a guard stationed at the entrance of the defile leading to Petra, and the amount to be paid would depend upon the number we might happen to find when we entered. These were never less than thirty or forty; and if there should not be more, the tribute exacted would not be more than thirty or forty dollars, but there might be two or three hundred; and, at all events, I had better give him my purse, and he would return me what was left. I suspected that, as he could not find out from Paul either how much I had with me or what I intended to give him, this story of the tribute was merely a pretext to levy an immediate contribution. The precise danger I had to fear was, that he would get my money from me piecemeal, and, when we came among Bedouins where it would be necessary to buy my peace, go off and leave me to their mercy. I did not want to have any rupture with him, particularly at the moment when I was at the very door of Petra, and might lose all that I had been endeavouring with so much personal difficulty to accomplish; and therefore told him, as to the bucksheesh f'or entering Petra, that I expected; and, when we should arrive there and learn how much it was,would be ready to pay it; but, in the mean time, for any little casual expense that might be incurred, I would give him a purse of five hundred piasters, or twenty-five dollars. Touching the hire of camels, I said that I did not expect to pay it until we should arrive at Hebron; and, hurling back upon him one of his own flourishes, told him that it was distrusting, my honour to ask it now. I reminded him of our conversation at Cairo, remarking that I had come into the desert upon the faith of his promise; and he replied very impertinently, if not menacingly, that one word here was worth a hundred at Cairo. I was somewhat roused at this, and, determined not to be dragooned into compliance, forgot for a moment my prudential plan, and told him that I would not be driven into that or anything else; and that, sooner than submit to his demand, I would turn back here, at the very door of Petra, and return to Cairo. This had its effect, for he was no more disposed to proceed to extremities than myself; and when I found him giving way a little, I threw in a powerful argument, which I had several times before hinted at, namely, that there were two parties on the Nile who were exceedingly anxious to make the same journey, and who would be governed altogether by the report I should make. I saw that his avarice and hope of future gain were rapidly getting the better of his eagerness to touch his money before it was earned and, with-out inflicting upon the reader a full account of our long negotiation, made up principally of blustering and exaggeration, with some diplomatic concessions on both sides, it is enough to say that at last, to my great relief, he withdrew his demand and took what, I offered.

Before daybreak the next morning we had struck our tent, and sending it and the other baggage by another route, the sheik being afraid to take with us anything that might tempt the Bedouins, and leaving behind us several of our men, the sheik, his brother, three Arabs, Paul, and myself, with nothing but what we had on, and provisions for one day, started for Wady Moussa and the city of Petra. Our course was a continued ascent. I have found it throughout difficult to give any description which can impart to the reader a distinct idea of the wild and desolate scenes presented among these mountainous deserts. I have been, too, in so many of the same general nature, that particular ones do not present themselves to my mind now with the force and distinctness of perfect recollection; and, in the few rough and hurried notes which I made on the spot, I marked rather the effect than the causes which produced it. I remember, however, that the mountains were barren, solitary, and desolate, and that, as we ascended, their aspect became more and more wild and rugged, and rose to grandeur and sublimity. I remember, 'too, that among these and wastes of crumbling rock there were beautiful streams gushing out from the sides of the mountains; and sometimes small valleys, where the green grass, and shrubs, and bushes were putting forth in early spring; and that, altogether, I saw among the stony mountains of Arabia Petraea more verdure than I had observed since I left the banks of the Nile. I remember, moreover, that the ascent was difficult;'that our camels toiled laboriously; and that even our sure-footed Arabian horses often slipped upon the steep and rugged path. Once the sheik and myself, being in advance of the rest, sat down upon an eminence which overlooked, on one side, a range of wild and barren mountains, and, on the other, the dreary valley of El Ghor; above us was the venerable summit of Mount Hor; and near us a stone blackened with smoke, and surrounded by fragments of bones, showing the place where the Arabs had sacrificed sheep to the Prophet Aaron. From this point we wound along the base of Mount Hor, which, from this great height, seemed just beginning to rise into a mountain; and I remember, that, in winding slowly along its base, as our companions had objected to our mounting to the tomb of Aaron, Paul and I were narrowly examining its sides for a path, and making arrangements to slip out as soon as they should all be asleep, and ascend by moonlight. Not far from the base of Mount Hor we came to some tombs cut in the sides of the rocks, and standing at the threshold of the entrance to the excavated city. Before entering this extraordinary place, it would not be amiss, in few words, to give its history.