CHAPTER IV.

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.

PETRA, the excavated city, the long-lost capital of Edom, in the Scriptures and profane writings in every language in which its name occurs, signifies a rock; and, through the shadows' of its early history, we learn that its inhabitants lived in natural clefts or excavations made in the solid rock. Desolate as it now is, we have reason to believe that it goes back to the time of Esau, "the father of Edom;" that princes and dukes, eight successive kings, and again a long line of dukes, dwelt there before any king "reigned over Israel;" and we recognise it from the earliest ages as the central point to which came the caravans from the interior of Arabia, Persia, and India, laden with all the precious commodities of the East, and from which these commodities were distributed through Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, and all the countries bordering or the Mediterranean, even Tyre and Sidon deriving their purple and dies from Petra. Eight hundred years before Christ, Amaziah, the king of Judea, "slew of Edom in the Valley of Salt ten thousand, and took Selah (the Hebrew name of Petra) by war." Three hundred years after the last of the prophets, and nearly a century before the Christian era, the "King of Arabia" issued from his palace at Petra at the head of fifty thousand men, horse and foot, entered Jerusalem, and, uniting with the Jews, pressed the siege of the temple, which was only raised by the advance of the Romans; and in the beginning of the second century, though its independence was lost, Petra was still the capital of a Roman province. After that time it rapidly declined; its history became more and more obscure; for more than a thousand years it was completely lost to the civilized world; and, until its discovery by Burckhardt in 1812, except to the wandering Bedouins its very site was unknown.

And this was the city at whose door I now stood. In a few words, this ancient and extraordinary city is situated within a natural amphitheatre of two or three miles in circumference, encompassed on all sides by rugged mountains five or six hundred feet in height. The whole of this area is now a waste of ruins, dwelling-houses, palaces, temples, and triumphal arches, all prostrate together in undistinguishable confusion. The sides of the mountains are cut smooth, in a perpendicular direction, and filled with long and continued ranges of dwelling-houses, temples, and tombs, excavated with vast labour out of the solid rock; and while their summits present Nature in her wildest and most savage form, their bases are adorned with all the beauty of architecture and art, with columns, and porticoes, and pediments, and ranges of corridors, enduring as the mountains out of which they are hewn, and fresh as if the work of a generation scarcely yet gone by.

Nothing can be finer than the immense rocky rampart which encloses the city. Strong, firm, and immoveable as Nature itself, it seems to deride the walls of cities and the puny fortifications of skilful engineers. The only access is by clambering over this wall of stone, practicable only in one place, or by an entrance the most extraordinary that Nature, in her wildest freaks, has ever framed. The loftiest portals ever raised by the hands of man, the proudest monuments of architectural skill and daring, sink into insignificance by the comparison. It is, perhaps, the most wonderful object in the world, except the ruins of the city to which it forms the entrance. Unfortunately, I did not enter by this door, but by clambering over the mountains at the other end; and when I stood upon the summit of the mountain, though I looked down upon the vast area filled with ruined buildings and heaps of rubbish, and saw the mountain-sides cut away so as to form a level surface, and presenting long ranges of doors in successive tiers or stories, the dwelling and burial places of a people long since passed away; and though immediately before me was the excavated front of the large and beautiful temple, I was disappointed. I had read the unpublished description of Captains Irby and Mangles. Several times the sheik had told me, in the most positive manner, that there was no other entrance; and I was moved to indignation at the marvellous and exaggerated, not to say false representations, as I thought, of the only persons who had given any account of this wonderful entrance. I was disappointed, too, in another matter. Burckhardt had been accosted, immediately upon his entry, by a large party of Bedouins, and been suffered to remain but a very short time. Messrs. Legh, Banks, Irby, and Mangles had been opposed by hundreds of Bedouins, who swore "that they should never enter their territory nor drink of their waters," and "that they would shoot them like dogs if they attempted it." And I expected some immediate opposition from at least the thirty or forty, fewer than whom, the sheik had told me, were never to be found in Wady Moussa. I expected a scene of some kind; but at the entrance of the city there was not a creature to dispute our passage; its portals were, wide open, and we passed along the stream down into the area, and still no man came to oppose us. We moved to the extreme end of the area; and, when in the act of dismounting at the foot of the rock on which stood the temple that had constantly faced us, we saw one solitary Arab straggling along without any apparent object, a mere wanderer among the ruins; and it is a not uninteresting fact, that this poor Bedouin was the only living being we saw in the desolate city of Petra. After gazing at us for a few moments from a distance, he came towards us, and in a few moments was sitting down to pipes and coffee with my companions. I again asked the sheik for the other entrance, and he again told me there was none; but I could not believe him, and set out to look for it myself; and although in my search I had already seen enough abundantly to repay me for all my difficulties in getting there, I could not be content without finding this desired avenue.

In front of the great temple, the pride and beauty of Petra, of which more hereafter, I saw a narrow opening in the rocks, exactly corresponding with my conception of the object for which I was seeking. A full stream of water was gushing through it, and filling up the whole mouth of the passage. Mounted on the shoulders of one of my Bedouins, I got him to carry me through the swollen stream at the mouth of the opening, and set me down on a dry place a little above, whence I began to pick my way, occasionally taking to the shoulders of my follower, and continued to advance more than a mile. I was beyond all peradventure in the great entrance I was seeking. There could not be two such, and I should have gone on to the extreme end of the ravine, but my Bedouin suddenly refused me the further use of his shoulders. He had been some time objecting and begging me to return, and now positively refused to go any farther; and, in fact, turned about himself. I was anxious to proceed, but I did not like wading up to my knees in the water, nor did I feel very resolute to go where I might expose myself to danger, as he seemed to intimate. While I was hesitating, another of my men came running up the ravine, and shortly after him Paul and the sheik, breathless with haste, and crying in low gutturals, "El Arab! el Arab!"--"The Arabs! the Arabs!" This was enough for me. I had heard so much of El Arab that I had become nervous. It was like the cry of Delilah in the ears of the sleeping Samson, "The Philistines be upon thee." At the other end of the ravine was an encampment of the El Alouins; and the sheik, having due regard to my communication about money matters, had shunned this entrance to avoid bringing upon me this horde of tribute-gatherers for a participation in the spoils. Without any disposition to explore farther, I turned towards the city; and it was now that I began to feel the powerful and indelible impression that must be produced on entering, through this mountainous passage, the excavated city of Petra.

For about two miles it lies between high and precipitous ranges of rocks, from five hundred to a thousand feet in height, standing as if torn asunder by some great convulsion, and barely wide enough for two horsemen to pass abreast. A swelling stream rushes between them; the summits are wild and broken; in some places overhanging the opposite sides, casting the darkness of night upon the narrow defile; then receding and forming an opening above, through which a strong ray of light is thrown down, and illuminates with the blaze of day the frightful chasm below. Wild fig-trees, oleanders, and ivy were growing out of the rocky sides of the cliffs hundreds of feet above our heads; the eagle was screaming above us; all along were the open doors of tombs, forming the great Necropolis of the city; and at the extreme end was a large open space, with a powerful body of light thrown down upon it, and exhibiting in one full view the facade of a beautiful temple, hewn out of the rock, with rows of Corinthian columns and ornaments, standing out fresh and clear as if but yesterday from the hands of the sculptor. Though coming directly from the banks of the Nile, where the preservation of the temples excites the admiration and astonishment of every traveller, we were roused and excited by the extraordinary beauty and excellent condition of the great temple at Petra. Even in coming upon it, as we did, at disadvantage, I remember that Paul, who was a passionate admirer of the arts, when he first obtained a glimpse of it, involuntarily cried out, and moving on to the front with a vivacity I never saw him exhibit before or afterward, clapped his hands, and shouted in ecstasy. To the last day of our being together he was in the habit of referring to his extraordinary fit of enthusiasm when he first came upon that temple; and I can well imagine that entering by this narrow defile, with the feelings roused by its extraordinary and romantic wildness and beauty, the first view of that superb facade must produce an effect which could never pass away. Even now, that I have returned to the pursuits and thought-engrossing incidents of a life in the busiest city in the world, often in situations as widely different as light from darkness, I see before me the facade of that temple; neither the Coliseum at Rome, grand and interesting as it is, nor the ruins of the Acropolis it Athens, nor the Pyramids, nor the mighty temples of the Nile, are so often present to my memory.

The whole temple, its columns, ornaments, porticoes, and porches, are cut out from and form part of the solid rock; and this rock, at the foot of which the temple stands like a mere ant, towers several hundred feet above, it's face cut smooth to the very summit, and the top remaining wild and misshapen as Nature made it. The whole area before the temple is perhaps an acre in extent, enclosed on all sides except at the narrow entrance, and an opening to the left of the temple, which leads into the area of the city by a pass through perpendicular rocks five or six hundred feet in height.

It is not my design to enter into the details of the many monuments in this extraordinary city; but, to give a general idea of the character of all the excavations, I cannot do better than go within the temple. Ascending several broad steps, we entered under a colonnade of four Corinthian columns, about thirty-five feet high, into a large chamber of some fifty feet square and twenty-five feet high. The outside of the temple is richly ornamented, but the interior is perfectly plain, there being no ornament of any kind upon the walls or ceiling; on each of the three sides is a small chamber for the reception of the dead; and on the back wall of the innermost chamber I saw the names of Messrs. Legh, Banks, Irby, and Mangles, the four English travellers who with so much difficulty had effected their entrance to the city; of Messieurs Laborde and Linant, and the two Englishmen and Italian of whom I have before spoken; and two or three others, which, from the character of the writing, I supposed to be the names of attendants upon some of these gentlemen. These were the only names recorded in the temple; and, besides Burckhardt, no other traveller had ever reached it. I was the first American who had ever been there. Many of my countrymen, probably, as was the case with me, have never known the existence of such a city; and, independently of all personal considerations, I confess that I felt what, I trust, was not an inexcusable pride, in writing upon the innermost wall of that temple the name of an American citizen; and under it, and flourishing on its own account in temples, and tombs, and all the most conspicuous places in Petra, is the illustrious name of Paulo Nuozzo, dragomano.

Leaving the temple and the open area on which it fronts, and following the stream, we entered another defile much broader than the first, on each side of which were ranges of tombs, with sculptured doors and columns; and on the left, in the bosom of the mountain, hewn out of the solid rock, is a large theatre, circular in form, the pillars in front fallen, and containing thirty-three rows of seats, capable of containing more than three thousand persons. Above the corridor was a range of doors opening to chambers in the rocks, the seats of the princes and wealthiest inhabitants of Petra, and not unlike a row of private boxes in a modern theatre.

The whole theatre is at this day in such a state of preservation, that if the tenants of the tombs around could once more rise into life, they might take their old places on its seats, and listen to the declamation of their favourite player. To me the stillness of a ruined city is nowhere so impressive as when sitting on the steps of its theatre; once thronged with the gay and pleasure-seeking, but now given up to solitude and desolation. Day after day these seats had been filled, and the now silent rocks had echoed to the applauding shout of thousands; and little could an ancient Edomite imagine that a solitary stranger, from a then unknown world, would one day be wandering among the ruins of his proud and wonderful city, meditating upon the fate of a race that has for ages passed away. Where are ye, inhabitants of this desolate city? ye who once sat on the seats of this theatre, the young, the high-born, the beautiful, and brave; who once rejoiced in your riches and power, and lived as if there was no grave? Where are ye now? Even the very tombs, whose open doors are stretching away in long ranges before the eyes of the wondering traveller, cannot reveal the mystery of your doom: your dry bones are gone; the robber has invaded your graves, and your very ashes have been swept away to make room for the wandering Arab of the desert.

But we need not stop at the days when a gay population were crowding to this theatre. In the earliest periods of recorded time, long before this theatre was built, and long before the tragic muse was known, a great city stood here. When Esau, having sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, came to his portion among the mountains of Seir; and Edom, growing in power and strength, became presumptuous and haughty, until, in her pride, when Israel prayed a passage through her country, Edom said unto Israel, "Thou shalt not pass by me, lest I come out against thee with the sword."

Amid all the terrible denunciations against the land of Idumea, "her cities and the inhabitants thereof," this proud city among the rocks, doubtless for its extraordinary sins, was always marked as a subject of extraordinary vengeance. "I have sworn by myself, saith the Lord, that Bozrah (the strong or fortified city) shall become a desolation, a reproach, and a waste, and a curse, and all the cities thereof shall be perpetual waste. Lo, I will make thee small among the heathen, and despised among men. Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thy heart, oh thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rocks, that boldest the height of the hill; though thou shouldst make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord."(Jeremaih xlix, 13, 15.) "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 for dragons, and a court for owls."(Isaiah xxxiv., 14,15.)

I would that the skeptic could stand as I did among the ruins of this city among the rocks, and there open the sacred book and read the words of the inspired penman, written when this desolate place was one of the greatest cities in the world. I see the scoff arrested, his cheek pale, his lip quivering, and his heart quaking with fear, as the ruined city cries out to him in a voice loud and powerful as that of one risen from the dead; though he would not believe Moses and the prophets, he believes the handwriting of God himself in the desolation and eternal ruin around him. We sat on the steps of the theatre, and made our noonday meal; our drink was from the pure stream that rolled down at our feet. Paul and myself were alone. We scared the partridge before us as we ascended, and I broke for a moment the stillness of the desolate city by the report of my gun.

All around the theatre, in the sides of the mountains, were ranges of tombs; and directly opposite they rose in long tiers one above another. Having looked into those around the theatre, I crossed to those opposite ; and, carefully as the brief time I had would allow, examined the whole range. Though I had no small experience in exploring catacombs and tombs, these were so different from any I had seen that I found it difficult to distinguish the habitations of the living from the chambers of the dead. The facades or architectural decorations of the front were everywhere handsome; and in this they differed materially from the tombs in Egypt; in the latter the doors were simply an opening in the rock, and all the grandeur and beauty of the work within; while here the door was always imposing in its appearance, and the interior was generally a simple chamber, unpainted and unsculptured.

I say that I could not distinguish the dwellings from the tombs; but this was not invariably the case; some were clearly tombs, for there were pits in which the dead had been laid, and others were as clearly dwellings, being without a place for the deposits of the dead. One of these last particularly attracted my attention. It consisted of one large chamber, having on one side, at the foot of the wall, a stone bench about a foot high, and two or three broad, in form like the divans in the East at the present day; at the other end were several small apartments, hewn out of the rock, with partition walls left between them, like stalls in a stable, and these had probably been the sleeping apartments of the different members of the family, the mysteries of bars and bolts, of folding-doors and third stories, being unknown in the days of the ancient Edomites. There were no paintings or decorations of any kind within the chamber; but the rock out of which it was hewn, like the whole stony rampart that encircled the city, was of a peculiarity and beauty that I never saw elsewhere, being a dark ground, with veins of white, blue, red, purple, and sometimes scarlet and light orange, running trough it in rainbow streaks; and within the chambers, where there had been no exposure to the action of the elements, the freshness and beauty of the colours in which these waving lines were drawn gave an effect hardly inferior to that of the paintings in the tombs of the kings at Thebes. From its high and commanding position, and the unusual finish of the work, this house, if so it may be called, had no doubt been the residence of one who had strutted his hour of brief existence among the wealthy citizens of Petra. In front was a large table of rock, forming a sort of court for the excavated dwelling, where probably, year after year, in this beautiful climate, the Edomite of old sat under the gathering shades of evening, sometimes looking down upon the congregated thousands and the stirring scenes in the theatre beneath, or beyond upon the palaces and dwel1ings in the area of the then populous city.

Farther on in the same range, though, in consequence of the steps of the streets being broken, we were obliged to go down and ascend again before we could reach it, was another temple, like the first, cut out of the solid rock, and, like the first too, having for its principal ornament a large urn, shattered and bruised by musket balls; for ignorant Arab, believing that gold is concealed in it, day after day, as he passes, levels at it his murderous gun, in the vain hope to break the vessel and scatter a golden shower on the ground.

But it would be unprofitable to dwell upon details. In the exceeding interest of the scene around me, I hurried from place to place, utterly insensible to physical fatigue; and being entirely alone, and having a full and undisturbed range of the ruins, I clambered up broken staircases and among the ruins of streets; and, looking into one excavation, passed on to another and another, and made the whole circuit of the desolate city. There, on the spot, everything had an interest which I cannot give in description; and if the reader has followed me so far, I have too much regard for him to drag him about after me as I did Paul. I am warned of the consequences by what occurred with that excellent and patient follower; for, before the day was over, he was completely worn out with fatigue.

The shades of evening were gathering around us as we stood for the last time on the steps of the theatre. Perfect as has been the fulfillment of the prophecy in regard to this desolate city, in no one particular has its truth been more awfully verified than in the complete destruction of its inhabitants; in the extermination of the race of the Edomites. In the same day, and by the voice of the same prophets, came the separate denunciations against the descendants of Israel and Edom, declaring against both a complete change of their temporal condition; and while the Jews have been dispersed in every country under heaven, and are still, in every land, a separate and unmixed people, "the Edomites have been cut off for ever, and there is not any remaining of the house of Esau."

"Wisdom has departed from Teman, and understanding out of the mount of Esau;" and the miserable Arab who now roams over the land cannot appreciate or understand the works of its ancient inhabitants. In the summer he cultivates the few valleys in which seed will grow, and in the winter makes his habitation in the tombs; and, stimulated by vague and exaggerated traditionary notions of the greatness and wealth of the people who have gone before him, his barbarous hand is raised against the remaining monuments of their arts; and, as he breaks to atoms the sculptured stone, he expects to gather up their long-bidden treasures. I could have lingered for days on the steps of that theatre, for I never was at a place where such a crowd of associations pressed upon the mind. But the sheik was hurrying me away. From the first he had told me that I must not pass a night within the city; and begging me not to tempt my fortune too rashly, he was perpetually urging me to make my retreat while there was yet time. He said that, if the Arabs at the other end of the great entrance heard of a stranger being there, they would be down upon me to a man, and, not content with extorting money, would certainly prevent my visiting the tomb of Aaron. He had touched the right chord; and considering that weeks or months could not impress the scene more strongly on my mind, and that I was no artist and could not carry away on paper the plans and models of ancient art, I mounted my horse from the very steps of the theatre, and followed the sheik in his progress up the valley. Turning back from the theatre, the whole area of the city burst upon the sight at once, filled with crumbling masses of rock and stone, the ruined habitations of a people long since perished from the face of the earth, and encompassed on every side by high ranges of mountains; and the sides of these were cut smooth, even to the summit, hundreds of feet above my head as I rode past, and filled with long-continued ranges of open doors, the entrances to dwellings and tombs, of which the small connecting staircases were not visible at a distance, and many of the tenements seemed utterly inaccessible.

Every moment the sheik was becoming more and more impatient; and, spurring my horse, I followed him on a gallop among, the ruins. We ascended the valley, and rising to the summit of the rocky rampart, it was almost dark when we found ourselves opposite a range of tombs in the suburbs of the city. Here we dismounted; and selecting from among them one which, from its finish and dimensions, must have been the last abode of some wealthy Edomite, we prepared to pass the night within its walls. I was completely worn out when I threw myself on the rocky floor of the tomb. I had just completed one of the most interesting days in my life; for the singular character of the city, and the uncommon beauty of its ruins, its great antiquity, the prophetic denunciations of whose truth it was the witness, its loss for more than a thousand years to the civilized world, its very existence being known only to the wandering Arab, the difficulty of reaching it, and the hurried and dangerous manner in which I had reached it, gave a thrilling and almost fearful interest to the time and place, of which I feel it utterly impossible to convey any idea.

In the morning Paul and I had determined, when our companions should be asleep, to ascend Mount Hor by moonlight; but now we thought only of rest; and seldom has the pampered tenant of a palace laid down with greater satisfaction upon his canopied bed than I did upon the stony floor of this tomb in Petra. In the front part of it was a large chamber, about twenty-five feet square and ten feet high; and behind this was another of smaller dimensions, furnished with receptacles for the dead, not arranged after the manner of shelves extending along the wall, as in the catacombs I had seen in Italy and Egypt, but cut length-wise in the rock, like ovens, so as to admit the insertion of the body with the feet foremost.

We built a fire in the outer chamber, thus lighting up the innermost recesses of the tombs; and, after our evening meal, while sipping coffee and smoking pipes, the sheik congratulated me upon my extreme good fortune in having seen Petra without any annoyance from the Bedouins; adding, as usual, that it was a happy day for me when I saw his face at Cairo. He told me that he had never been to Wady Moussa without seeing at least thirty or forty Arabs, and sometimes three or four hundred; that when Abdel Hag (Mr. Linant) and Mr. Laborde visited Petra the first time, they were driven out by the Bedouins after remaining only five hours, and were chased down into the valley, Mr. Linant changing his dromedary every three hours on the way back to Akaba; that there he remained, pretending to be sick, for twenty-four days, every day feasting half the tribe; and during that time sending to Cairo for money, dresses, swords, guns, pistols, ammunition, &c., which he distributed among them so lavishly that the whole tribe escorted him in triumph to Petra. This is so different from Mr. Laborde's account of his visit, that it cannot be true. I asked him about the visit of Messrs. Legh and Banks, and Captains Irby and Mangles; and drawing close to me, so as not to be overheard by the rest, he told me that he remembered their visit well; that they came from Kerek with three sheiks and three or four hundred men, and that the Bedouins of Wady Moussa turned out against them more than two thousand strong. His uncle was then the sheik, and he himself a young man; and, if his account is true, which cannot, however, be, as it is entirely different from theirs, he began the life of a knave so young, that, though he had no great field for exercise, he ought then to have been something of a proficient; he said, that while they were negotiating and parleying, one of the strange Arabs slipped into his hands a purse with a hundred pieces of gold, which he showed to his uncle, and proposed to him that they should use their influence to procure the admission of the strangers, and divide the money between them; and so wrought upon the old man that he procured their entrance, telling the tribe that one of the strangers was sick, and, if they did not admit them into Wady Moussa, he would take them to his tent; and, added the sheik, his eyes sparkling with low cunning, my uncle and I ate the whole of that gold without any one of the tribe ever knowing anything about it.

One piece of information he gave me, which I thought very likely to be true; that the road to Petra, and thence through Idumea in any direction, never could be pursued with assurance of safety, or become a frequented route, because the Bedouins would always be lying in wait for travellers, to exact tribute or presents; and although a little might sometimes content them, at others their demands would be exorbitant, and quarrels and bad consequences to the traveller would be almost sure to follow; and he added, in reference to our visit, that, as soon as the Arabs should hear of a stranger having been at Petra, they would be down in swarms; and perhaps even now would follow us into the valley. I was satisfied that I had made a fortunate escape, not, perhaps, from personal danger, but from grinding exactions, if not from robbery; and, congratulating myself upon my good fortune so far, I began to feel my way for what I now regarded as important as before I had thought the journey to Petra, namely, a visit to the tomb of Aaron.

My companions opposed my going to it, saying that no Christian had ever done so; and that none but Mussulmans went there, and they only to sacrifice a sheep upon the tomb. I told them that I also designed to sacrifice; and that, like them, we regarded Aaron as a prophet; that my visit to Petra was nothing unless I made the sacrifice; and that my conscience would not be at ease unless I performed it according to my vow. This notice of my pious purpose smoothed some of the difficulties, as the Arabs knew that after the sacrifice the sheep must be eaten. The sheik was much more liberal or more indifferent than the rest, and my desire was finally assented to; although, in winding up a long discussion about the pedigree of Aaron, one of them held out to the last that Aaron was a Mussulman, and would not believe that he lived before Mohammed. He had an indefinite idea that Mohammed was the greatest man that ever lived, and in his mind this was not consistent with the idea of any one having lived before him.

My plans for the morrow being all arranged, the Bedouins stretched themselves out in the outer chamber, while I went within; and seeking out a tomb as far back as I could find, I crawled in feet first, and found myself very much in the condition of a man buried alive. But never did a man go to his tomb with so much satisfaction as I felt. I was very tired; the night was cold, and here I was completely sheltered. I had just room enough to turn round; and the worthy old Edomite for whom the tomb was made never slept in it more quietly than I did. Little did he imagine that his bones would one day be scattered to the winds, and a straggling American and a horde of Bedouins, born and living thousands of miles from each other, would be sleeping quietly in his tomb, alike ignorant and careless of him for whom it was built.

CHAPTER V.

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.

A MAN rising from a tomb with all his clothes on does not require much time for the arrangement of his toilet. In less than half an hour we had breakfasted, and were again on our way. Forgetting all that had engrossed my thoughts and feelings the day before, I now fixed my eyes upon the tomb of Aaron, on the summit of Mount Hor. The mountain was high, towering above all the rest, bare and rugged to its very summit, without a tree or even a bush growing on its steril side; and our road lay directly along its base. The Bedouins again began to show an unwillingness to allow my visit to the tomb; and the sheik himself told me that it would take half the day, and perhaps be the means of bringing upon me some of the horde I had escaped. I saw that they were disposed to prevent me from accomplishing my object; and I felt sure that, if we met any strange Arabs, my purpose would certainly be defeated. I suspected them of stratagem, and began to think of resorting to stratagem for myself. They remembered the sheep, however, and told me that the sacrifice could as well be performed at the base as on the summit of the mountain; but this, of course, would not satisfy my conscience.

With my eyes constantly fixed on the top of the mountain, I had thought for some time that it would not be impracticable to ascend from the side on which I was. Paul and I examined the localities as carefully as a couple of engineers seeking an assailable place to scale the wall of a fortified city; and afraid to wait till they had matured some plan of opposing me, I determined to take them by surprise; and throwing myself from my horse, and telling Paul to say that we would climb the mountain here, and meet then on the other side, I was almost out of hearing before they had recovered from their astonishment. Paul followed me, and the sheik and his men stood for some time without moving, irresolute what to do; and it was not until we had advanced considerably on the mountain that we saw the caravan again slowly moving along its base. None of them offered to accompany us, though we should have been glad to have one or two with us on our expedition.

For some distance we found the ascent sufficiently smooth and easy--much more so than that of Mount Sinai--and, so far as we could see before us, it was likely to continue the same all the way up. We were railing at the sheik for wanting to carry us around to the other side, and congratulating ourselves upon having attempted it here, when we came to a yawning and precipitous chasm, opening its horrid jaws almost from the very base of the mountain. From the distance at which we had marked out our route, the inequalities of surface could not be distinguished, but here it was quite another thing. We stood on the brink of the chasm, and looked at each other in blank amazement; and at a long distance, as they wound along the base of the mountain, I thought I could see a quiet smile of derision lighting up the grim visages of my Bedouin companions. We stood upon the edge of the chasm, looking down into its deep abyss, like the spirits of the departed lingering on the shores of the Styx, vainly wishing for a ferryman to carry us over, and our case seemed perfectly hopeless without some such aid. But the days when genii and spirits lent their kind assistance to the sons of men are gone; if a man finds himself in a ditch, he must get out of it as well as he can, and so it was with us on the brink of this chasm. Bad, however, as was our prospect in looking forward, we had not yet begun to look back; and as soon as we saw that there was no possibility of getting over it, we began to descend; and groping, sliding, jumping, and holding on with hands and feet, we reached the bottom of the gully; and, after another hard half hour's toil, were resting our wearied limbs upon the opposite brink, at about the same elevation as that of the place from which we had started. This success encouraged us; and, without caring or thinking how we should come down again, we felt only the spirit of the seaman's cry to the trembling sailor boy, "Look aloft, you lubber;" and looking aloft, we saw through a small opening before us, though still at a great distance, the white dome that covered the tomb of the first high-priest of Israel. Again with stout hearts we resumed our ascent; but, as we might reasonably have supposed, that which we had passed was not the only chasm in the mountains. What had appeared to us slight inequalities of surface we found great fissures and openings, presenting themselves before us in quick succession; not, indeed, as absolute and insurmountable barriers to farther progress, but affording us only the encouragement of a bare possibility of crossing them. The whole mountain, from its base to its summit, was rocky and naked, affording not a tree or bush to assist us; and all that we had to hold on by were the rough and broken corners of the porous sandstone rocks, which crumbled in our hands and under our feet, and more than once put us in danger of our lives. Several times, after desperate exertion, we sat down perfectly discouraged at seeing another and another chasm before us, and more than once we were on the point of giving up the attempt, thinking it impossible to advance any farther; but we had come so far, and taken so little notice of our road, that it was almost as impossible to return; and a distant and accidental glimpse of the whitened dome would revive our courage, and stimulate us to another effort. Several times I mounted on Paul's shoulders, and with his helping reached the top of a precipitous or overhanging rock, where, lying down with my face over the brink, I took up the pistol swords, &c., and then helped him up in turn; sometimes, again, he was the climber, and my shoulders were the stepping-stone; and, in the rough grasps that we gave each other, neither thought of the relation of master and servants. On the sides of that rugged mountain, so desolate, so completely removed from the world, whose difficult ascent had been attempted by few human footsteps since the days when "Moses and Aaron went up in sight of all the congregation," the master and the man lay on the same rock, encountering the same fatigues and dangers, and inspired by the same hopes and fears. My dress was particularly bad for the occasion; for, besides the encumbrance of pistols and a sword, my long silk gown and large sleeves were a great annoyance, as I wanted every moment a long reach of the arm and full play of the legs; even our light Turkish slippers were impediments in our desperate scramble, and we were obliged to pull them off, for the better hold that could be taken with the naked feet.

It will be remembered that we were ascending on the eastern side of the mountain; and in one of our pauses to breathe, when about half way up, we looked back upon the high rampart of rocks that enclosed the city of Petra; and on the outside of the rock we saw the facade of a beautiful temple, resembling in its prominent features, but seeming larger and more beautiful than, the Khasne of Pharaoh opposite the principal entrance of the city. I have no doubt that a visit to that temple would have abundantly repaid me for the day I should have lost; for, besides its architectural beauty, it would have been curious to examine, and, if possible, discover why it was constructed, standing alone outside of the city, and, as it appeared, apart from everything connected with the habitations of the Edomites. But as yet we had work enough before us. Disencumbering ourselves of all our useless trappings, shoes, pistols, swords, tobacco-pouch, and water-sack, which we tied together in a sash and the roll of a turban, by dint of climbing, pushing, and lifting each other, after the most arduous upward scramble I ever accomplished, we attained the bald and hoary summit of the mountain; and, before we had time to look around, at the extreme end of the desolate valley of El Ghor, our attention was instantly attracted and engrossed by one of the most interesting objects in the world, and Paul and I exclaimed at the same moment, "The Dead Sea!" Lying between the barren mountains of Arabia and Judea, presenting to us from that height no more than a small, calm, and silvery surface, was that mysterious sea which rolled its dark waters over the guilty cities of Sodom and Gomorrah; over whose surface, according to the superstition of the Arabs, no bird can fly, and in whose waters no fish can swim; constantly receiving in its greedy bosom the whole body of the Jordan, but, unlike all other waters, sending forth no tribute to the ocean. A new idea entered my mind. I would follow the desert valley of El Ghor to the shores of the Dead Sea, along whose savage borders I would coast to the ruined Jericho and the hallowed Jordan, and search in its deadly waters for the ruins of the doomed and blasted cities.

If I had never stood on the top of Mount Sinai, I should say that nothing could exceed the desolation of the view from the summit of Mount Hor, its most striking objects being the dreary and rugged mountains of Seir, bare and naked of trees and verdure, and heaving their lofty summits to the skies, as if in a vain and fruitless effort to excel the mighty pile, on the top of which the high-priest of Israel was buried. Before me was a land of barrenness and ruin; a land accursed by God, and against which the prophets had set their faces; the land of which it is thus written in the Book of Life: "Moreover, the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face against Mount Seir, and prophesy against it, and say unto it, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, oh Mount Seir, I am against thee, and I will stretch out mine hand against thee, and I will make thee most desolate. I will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord. Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end: therefore, as I live, saith the Lord God, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee: since thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee. Thus will I make Mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth out and him that returneth. And I will fill his mountains with his slain men: in thy hills, and in thy valleys, and in all thy rivers shall they fall that are slain with the sword. I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not return: and ye shall know that I am the Lord."(Ezekiel xxxv.)

The Bible account of the death of Aaron is--"And the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, journeyed from Kadesh, and came unto Mount Hor. And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in Mount Hor, by the coast of the land of Edom, saying, Aaron shall be gathered unto big people: for he shall not enter into the land which I have given unto the children of Israel, because ye rebelled against my word at the water of Meribah. Take Aaron and Eleazer his son, and bring them up unto Mount Hor; and strip Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazer his son: and Aaron shall be gathered unto his people, and shall die there. And Moses did as the Lord commanded: and they went up into Mount Hor, in the sight of all the congregation. And Moses stripped Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazer his son; and Aaron died there in the top of the mount: and Moses and Eleazer came down from the mount. And when all the congregation saw that Aaron was dead, they mourned for Aaron thirty days, even all the house of Israel."(Numbers,xx.)

On the very "top of the mount," reverenced alike by Mussulmans and Christians, is the tomb of Aaron. The building is about thirty feet square, containing a single chamber; in front of the door is a tombstone, in form like the oblong slabs in our churchyards, but larger and higher; the top rather larger than the bottom, and covered with a ragged pall of faded red cotton in shreds and patches. At its head stood a high round stone, on which the Mussulman offers his sacrifices. The stone was blackened with smoke; stains of blood and fragments of burnt brush were still about it; all was ready but the victim; and when I saw the reality of the preparations, I was very well satisfied to have avoided the necessity of conforming to the Mussulman custom. A few ostrich eggs, the usual ornaments of a mosque, were suspended from the ceiling, and the rest of the chamber was perfectly bare. After going out, and from the very top of the tomb surveying again and again the desolate and dreary scene that presented itself on every side, always terminating with the distant view of the Dead Sea, I returned within; and examining once more the tomb and the altar, walked carefully around the chamber. There was no light except what came from the door; and, in groping in the extreme corner on one side, my foot descended into an aperture in the floor. I put it down carefully, and found a step, then another, and another, evidently a staircase leading to a chamber below. I went down till my head was on the level of the floor, but could see nothing; all was dark, and I called to Paul to strike a light. Most provokingly, he had no materials with him. He generally carried a flint and steel for lighting his pipe with; but now, when I most wanted it, he had none. I went back to the staircase, and, descending to the bottom of the steps, attempted to make out what the place might be; but it was utterly impossible. I could not see even the steps on which I stood. I again came out, and made Paul search in all his pockets for the steel and flint. My curiosity increased with the difficulty of gratifying it; and in a little while, when the thing seemed to be utterly impossible, with this hole unexplored, Petra, Mount Hor, and the Dead Sea appeared to lose half their interest. I ran up and down the steps, inside and out, abused Paul, and struck stones together in the hope of eliciting a spark; but all to no purpose. I was in an agony of despair, when I found myself grasping convulsively the handle of my pistol. A light broke suddenly upon me. A pile of dry brush and cotton rags lay at the foot of the sacrificial altar; I fired my pistol into it, gave one puff, and the whole mass was in a blaze. Each seized a burning brand, and we descended. At the foot of the steps was a narrow chamber, at the other end an iron grating, opening in the middle, and behind the grating a tomb cut in the naked rock, guarded and reverenced as the tomb of Aaron. I tore aside the rusty grating, and thrusting in my arm up to the shoulders, touched the hallowed spot. The rocks and mountains were echoing the discharge of my pistol, like peals. of crashing thunder; and while, with the burning brand in one hand, I was thrusting the other through the grating, the deafening reverberations seemed to rebuke me for an act of sacrilege, and I rushed up the steps like a guilty and fear-struck criminal. Suddenly I heard from the foot of the mountain a quick and irregular discharge of firearms, which again resounded in loud echoes through the mountains. It was far from my desire that the bigoted Mussulmans should come upon me, and find me with my pistol still smoking in my hand, and the brush still burning in the tomb of the prophet; and, tearing off a piece of the ragged pall, we hurried from the place and dashed down the mountain on the opposite side with a speed and recklessness that only fear could give. If there was room for question between a scramble or a jump, we gave the jump; and, when we could not jump, our shoes were off in a moment, one leaned over the brow of the precipice, and gave the other his hand, and down we went, allowing nothing to stop us. Once for a moment we were at a loss; but Paul, who, in the excitement of one successful leap after another, had become amazingly confident, saw a stream of water, and made for it with the glorious boast that where water descended we could; and the suggestion proved correct, although the water found much less difficulty in getting down than we did. In short, after an ascent the most toilsome, and a descent the most hair-brained and perilous it was ever my fortune to accomplish, in about half an hour we were at the base of the mountain, but still hurrying on to join our escort.

We had.only to cross a little valley to reach the regular camel-track, when we saw from behind a slightly elevated range of rocks the head and long neck of a dromedary; a Bedouin was on his back, but, riding sidewise, did not see us. Another came, and another, and another; then two or three, and, finally, half a dozen at a time, the blackest, grimmest, and ugliest vagabonds I had ever yet seen. A moment before Paul and I had both complained of fatigue, but it is astonishing how the sight of these honest men revived us; any one seeing the manner in which we scoured along the side of the mountain would have thought that all our consciousness was in our legs. The course we were pursuing when we first saw them would have brought us on the regular camel-track a little in advance of them but now our feet seemed to cling to the sides of the mountains. We were in a humour for almost calling on the rocks to fall upon us and cover us; and, if there had been a good dodgring-place, I am afraid I should here have to say that we had taken advantage of it until the very unwelcome caravan passed by; but the whole surface of the country, whether on mountain side or in valley's depth, was bare and naked as a floor; there was not a bush to obstruct the view; and soon we stood revealed to these unpleasant witnesses of our agility. They all shouted to us at once; and we returned the salute, looking at them over our shoulders but pushing on as fast as we could walk. In civilized society, our course of proceeding would have been considered a decided cut; but the unmannerly savages did not know when they received a civil cut, and were bent on cultivating our acquaintance. With a loud shout, slipping off their camels and whipping up their dromedaries, they left the track, and dashed across the valley to intercept us. I told Paul that it was all over, and now we must brazen it out; and we had just time to turn around and reconnoitre for a moment, before we were almost trodden under foot by their dromedaries.

With the accounts that we had read and heard of these Bedouins, it was not a pleasant thing to fall into their hands alone; and, without the protection of the sheik, we had reason to apprehend bad treatment. We were on a rising ground; and, as they came bounding towards us, I had time to remark that there was not a gun or pistol among them; but every one, old and young, big and little, carried an enormous sword slung over his back, the hilt coming up towards the left shoulder, and in his hand a large club, with a knot at the end as large as a doubled fist. Though I had no idea of making any resistance, it was a satisfaction to feel that they might have some respect for our firearms; as even a Bedouin's logic can teach him, that though a gun or pistol can kill but one, no man in a crowd can tell but that he may be that one. Our armory, however, was not in the best condition for immediate use. I had fired one of my pistols in the tomb of Aaron and lost the flint of the other; and Paul had burst the priming cap on one of his barrels, and the other was charged with bird-shot. P>It seemed that there was nothing hostile in their intentions; for though they came upon us with a wild and clamorous shout, their dark eyes appeared to sparkle with delight as they shook us by the hand, and their tumultuous greeting, to compare small things with great, reminded me of the wild welcome which the Arabs of Saladin gave to the litter of the Queen of England, when approaching the Diamond of the Desert on the shores of the Dead Sea. Nevertheless, I looked suspiciously upon all their demonstrations of good-will; and, though I returned all their greetings, even to the kiss on their black faces, I would rather have been looking at them through the bars of an iron grating. But Paul behaved like a hero, although he was a supreme coward, and admitted it himself.* I knew that everything depended upon him; but they had come upon us in such a hurry, and so few words had passed between us, that I had no idea how he stood affected. His first words reassured me; and really, if he had passed all his life in taming Bedouins, he could not have conducted himself more gallantly or sensibly. He shook hands with one, took a pipe from the mouth of another, kicked the dromedary of a third, and patted his owner on the back, smoking, laughing, and talking all the time, ringing the changes upon the Sheik El Alouin, Habeeb Effendi, and Abdel Hasis. I knew that he was lying from his remarkable amplitude of words, and from his constantly mixing up Abdel Hasis (myself) with the Habeeb Effendi, the prime minister of the pacha; but he was going on so smoothly that I had not the heart to stop him; and besides, I thought he was playing for himself as well as for me, and I had no right to put him in danger by interfering. At length, all talking together, and Paul's voice rising above the rest, in force as well as frequency, we returned to the track, and proceeded forward in a body to find the sheik.

Not to be too heavy on Paul for the little wanderings of his tongue, I will barely mention such as he remembered himself. Beginning with a solemn assurance that we had not been in Wady Moussa or Petra (for this was his cardinal point), he affirmed that I was a Turk making a pilgrimage to the tomb of Aaron under a vow; and that, when Sheik El Alouin was at Cairo, the Habeeb Effendi had taken me to the sheik's tent, and had told him to conduct me to Djebel Haroun, or Mount Hor, and from thence to Hebron (Khalil), and that, if I arrived in safety, he, the Habeeb Effendi, would pay him well for it. We went on very well for a little while; but by-and-by the Bedouins began talking earnestly among themselves, and a fine, wicked-looking boy, leaning down from the hump of his bare-backed dromedary, with sparkling eyes thrust out his hand and whispered bucksheesh; an old dried-up man echoed it in a hoarse voice directly in my ears; and one after another joined in, till the whole party, with their deep-toned gutturals, were croaking the odious and ominous demand that grated harshly on my nerves. Their black eyes were turned upon me with a keen and eager brightness; the harsh cry was growing louder every moment; and I had already congratulated myself upon having very little about my person, and Paul was looking over his shoulders, and flourishing the Habeeb Effendi and the Sheik El Alouin with as loud a voice as ever, but evidently with a fainting heart; bucksheesh, bucksheesh, bucksheesh was drowning every other noise, when a sudden turn in the road brought us upon the sheik and his attendants. The whole party were in confusion; some were descending the bare sides of the mountains, others were coming down with their dromedaries upon a full run; the sheik's brother, on my horse, was galloping along the base; and the sheik himself, with his long red dress streaming in the wind, and his spear poised in the air, was dashing full run across the plain. All seemed to catch a glimpse of us at the same moment, and at the same moment all stopped. The sheik stood for a little space, as if astonished and confounded at seeing us attended by such an escort; and then spurring again his fiery horse, moved a few paces towards us, and dismounting, struck his spear in the sand, md waited to receive us. The men came in from all quarters; and, almost at the same moment, all had gathered around the spear. The sheik seemed more alarmed than any of us, and Paul said he turned perfectly green. He had heard the report of the pistol, which had given him much uneasiness; the men had answered, and scattered themselves abroad in search of us; and now seeing us come up in the midst of such a horde of Bedouins, he supposed that we had opened an account which could only be settled with blood.

The spirit of lying seemed to have taken possession of us. Thinking it would not be particularly acceptable to my pious friends to hear that I had been shooting in the tomb of Aaron, I told Paul to say that I had shot at a partridge. Even before saluting the strangers, with a hurried voice and quivering lip, the sheik asked the cause of our firing; and when Paul told him, according to my instructions, that the cause was merely a simple bird, he was evidently relieved, although, unable to master his emotion, he muttered, "Cursed be the partridge, and cursed the gun, and cursed the hand that fired it." He then saluted our new companions, and all sat down around his long spear to smoke and drink coffee. I withdrew a little apart from them, and threw myself on the ground, and then began to suffer severely from a pain which, in my constant excitement since the cause of it occurred, I had not felt. The pistol which I fired in the tomb had been charged by Paul with two balls, and powder enough for a musket; and in the firing it recoiled with such force as to lay open the back of my hand to the bone. While I was binding it up as well as I could, the sheik was taking care that I should not suffer from my withdrawal. I have mentioned Paul's lying humour, and my own tendency that way; but the sheik cast all our doings in the shade; and particularly, as if it had been concerted beforehand, he averred most solemnly, and with the most determined look of truth imaginable, that we had not been in Wady Moussa; that I was a Turk on a pilgrimage to Mount Hor; that when he was in Cairo waiting for the caravan of pilgrims, the pacha sent the Habeeb Effendi to conduct him to the citadel, whither he went, and found me sitting on the divan by the side of the pacha; that the pacha took me by the hand, told him that I was his (the pacha's) particular friend, and that he, Sheik El Alouin, must conduct me first to Mount Hor, and then to Khalil or Hebron, and that he had given his head to Mohammed Aly for my safety. Paul was constantly moving between me and the group around the spear, and advising me of the progress of affairs ; and when I heard who I was, and of my intimacy with the pacha, thinking that it was not exactly the thing for the particular friend of the Viceroy of Egypt to be sprawling on the sand, I got up, and, for the credit of my friend, put myself rather more upon my dignity. We remained here half an hour, when, seeing that matters became no worse, I took it for granted that they were better; and, after moving about a little, I began to arrange the saddle of my horse; and, by-and-by, as a sort of declaration of independence, I told them that I would ride on slowly, and they could follow at their convenience. The sheik remained to settle with my new friends. They were a caravan belonging to the El Alouin tribe, from the tents at the mouth of the entrance to Petra, now on their way to Gaza; and the sheik got rid of them by paying them something, and assuring them that we had not been in Petra.

Early in the afternoon a favourite camel was taken sick, stumbled, and fell; and we turned aside among the mountains, where we were completely hidden from the view of any passing Bedouins. The camel belonged to a former female slave of the sheik, whom he had manumitted and married to "his black," and to whom he had given a tent and this camel as a dowry. He had been very anxious to get away as far as possible from Wady Moussa that night; but, as soon as the accident happened, with the expression always uppermost in the mouth of the followers of the Prophet, "God wills it," he began to doctor the animal. It was strange to be brought into such immediate contact with the disciples of fatalism. If we did not reach the point we were aiming at, God willed it; if it rained, God willed it; and I suppose that, if they had happened to lay their black hands upon my throat, and stripped me of everything I possessed, they would have piously raised their eyes to heaven, and cried, "God willed it." I remember Mr. Wolff,* the converted Jew missionary, told me an anecdote illustrating most strikingly the operation of this fatalist creed. He was in Aleppo during an earthquake, and saw two Turks smoking their pipes at the base of a house then tottering and ready to fall. He cried out to them and warned them of their peril; but they turned their eyes to the impending danger, and crying, "Allah el Allah," "God is merciful", were buried under the ruins.

It was not more than four o'clock when we pitched our tent. The Arabs all came under the shade to talk more at ease about our ascent of Mount Hor, and our adventure with the Bedouins of Wady Moussa; and wishing to show them that we Christians conceived ourselves to have some rights and interests in Aaron, I read to them, and Paul explained, the verses in the Bible recording his death and burial on the mountain. They were astonished and confounded at finding anything about him in a book; records of travel being entirely unknown to them, and books, therefore, regarded as of unquestionable veracity. The unbeliever of the previous night, however, was now as obstinate as if he had come from the banks of the Zuyder Zee. He still contended that the great high-priest of the Jews was a true follower of the Prophet; and I at last accommodated the matter by allowing that he was not a Christian.

That evening Paul and the sheik had a long and curious conversation. After supper, and over their pipes and coffee, the sheik asked him, as a brother, why we had come to that old city, Wady Moussa, so long a journey through the desert, spending so much money; and when Paul told him it was to see the ruins, he took the pipe from his mouth, and said, " That will do very well before the world; but, between ourselves, there is something else;" and when Paul persisted in it, the sheik said to him, "Swear by your God that you do not come here to search for treasure;" and when Paul had sworn by his God, the sheik rose, and, pointing to his brother as the very acme of honesty and truth, said, after a moment's hesitation, "Osman, I would not believe it if that brother had sworn it. No," he continued, "the Europeans are too cunning to spend their money in looking at old stones. I know there is treasure in Wady Moussa; I have dug for it, and I mean to dig for it again;" and then again he asked Paul whether he had discovered any, and where; telling him that he would aid in removing it, without letting any of the rest of the tribe know anything of the matter.

EARLY in the morning we continued our descent down the mountain. Every turn was presenting us with a new view of wild, barren, and desolate scenery; and yet frequently, in little spots watered by the mountain streams we saw shrubs, and patches of green grass, and odoriferous bushes. At about nine o'clock we were again at the foot of the mountains of Seir, again moving along the great desert valley of El Ghor; and again I saw, in imagination, at the extreme end of the valley, that mysterious sea which I had first looked upon from the summit of Mount Her. I had spoken to the sheik before, and again I tried to prevail upon him to follow the valley directly to its shores; but he told me, as before, that he had never travelled that road, and the Bedouins (whom he had last night declared to be total strangers) were deadly enemies of his tribe; in short it was impossible to prevail upon him; and, as I found afterward, it would have been physically impossible to proceed along the mountainous borders of the sea.

We pursued the route which I had originally contemplated, through the land of Idumea. In regard to this part of my journey I wish to be particularly understood. Three different parties, at different times and under different. circumstances, after an interval of twenty years from its discovery by Burckhardt, had entered the city of Petra, but not one of them had passed through the land of Idumea. The route of the two Englishmen and Italian before referred to was not precisely known; and, with the exception of these three, I was the first traveller who had ever attempted to pass through the doomed and blighted Edom. In very truth, the prophecy of Isaiah, "None shall pass through it for ever and ever," seemed in a state of literal fulfillment. And now, without considering that I was perhaps braving the malediction of Heaven, but stimulated by the interest of associations connected with the denounced region, and the excitement of travelling over a new and unbeaten track, I was again moving along the desert valley of El Ghor. P>In the present state of the world, it is an unusual thing to travel a road over which hundreds have not passed before. Europe, Asia, and even the sands of Africa, have been over-run and trodden down by the feet of travellers; but in the land of Idumea, the oldest country in the world, the aspect of everything is new and strange, and the very sands you tread on have never been trodden by the feet of civilized human beings. The Bedouin roams over them like the Indian on our native prairies. The road along which the stranger journeys was far better known in the days of David and Solomon than it is now; and when he tires with the contemplation of barrenness and ruin, he may take the Bible in his hand, and read what Edom was, and how God, by the mouth of his prophets, cursed it; and see with his own eyes whether God's words be true. "Also Edom shall be a desolation; every one that goeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss at all the plagues thereof. As in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the neighbouring cities thereof, saith the Lord, no man shall abide there, neither shall a son of man dwell in it. Therefore, hear the counsel of the Lord that he hath taken against Edom; and his purposes that he hath purposed against the inhabitants of Teman; surely the least of the flock shall draw them out; surely he shall make their habitations desolate with them. The earth is moved. at the noise of their fall, at the cry, the noise thereof was heard in the Red Sea."(Jeremiah xix.) And again. " Thus saith the Lord God: Because that Edom hath dealt against the house of Judah by taking vengeance, and hath greatly offended, and revenged himself upon them; therefore, thus saith the Lord God, I will also stretch out mine hand upon Edom, and will cut off man and beast from it; and I will make it desolate from Teman."(Ezekiel xxxv.) "Edom shall be a desolate wilderness."(Joel iii.,19.) "For three transgressions of Edom, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof."(Amos i., ll.) "Thus saith the Lord God concerning Edom: Behold, I have made thee small among the heathen: thou art greatly despised. The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground? Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord. Shall I not in that day, saith the Lord, even destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of the mount of Esau? And thy mighty men, oh Teman, shall be dismayed, to the end that every one of the mount of Esau may be cut off by slaughter."(Obadiah i.)

All that day the sheik was particularly disagreeable. He was constantly talking of the favourable circumstances under which I had seen Petra, the. bad character of the Bedouins, his devotion to me, and the generosity of Mr. Laborde and Abdel Hag. Ever since we started, one of his standing subjects of conversation with Paul had been what he expected from me; and to-day be pressed him particularly, to learn how much money I had brought with me. In the evening he came to my tent. He was in the habit of coming in every evening; and, though I did not like him, I was in the habit of talking with him; and, according to the Arab custom, I always asked him to take a share of my meal. In general, appease the stomach, and you gain the heart of the Arab; but the viscera of my sheik were of impenetrable toughness. They produced none of that delicious repose, that "peace on earth, and good-will towards all men" spirit, which comes over an honest man after dinner. "A child might play with me," said the good-hearted son of Erin, as he threw himself back in his chair after dinner; but it was not so with my sheik. While he was eating my bread, he was plotting against me. I had smoked my pipe, and was lying on my mat reading, while a long conversation was going on between him and Paul, and my suspicions were aroused; for, on the part of the sheik, it was carried on in a low whisper. Though he knew I could not understand a word, he had the indefinite fear that indicates a guilty intention; and, as I looked up occasionally from my book, I saw his keen and cunning eyes turned towards me, and withdrawn as soon as they met mine. He remained there more than an hour, conversing in the same low whisper; I, meanwhile, watching his looks from time to time; and when he had gone I asked what it all meant. At first Paul hesitated, but finally said that it was the old story about Abdel Hag's generosity, and what he expected from me; for himself, the sheik expected at least two hundred and fifty dollars; his brother would not expect so much; but that he was on an entirely different footing from the men; and he had concluded, by attempting to bribe Paul, to find out how much money I had with me, and how much I intended to give him; and, in going out, had slipped a couple of pieces into Paul's hand as an earnest. I have not troubled the reader with the many petty difficulties I had with the sheik, nor the many little circumstances that were constantly occurring to irritate me against him. I had been several times worked up to such a pitch that it was difficult to keep within the bounds of prudence; and I now broke through all restraints. From the beginning he had been exaggerating the danger of the road, and making a parade of devotion of the value of his services; and only the last night I had been driven out of my tent by four enormous fires which he had built at the four corners, as he said, for the men to sleep by and keep guard. I could hardly restrain myself then; but merely telling him that I would rather be robbed than roasted, I reserved myself for a better moment. The fact is, from the beginning I had been completely mistaken in my opinion touching the character of the chief of a powerful tribe of Bedouins. I had imagined him like the chief of a tribe of our own Indians, wild, savage, and lawless, but generous and true when he had once offered his protection; one who might rob or even murder, but who would never descend to the meanness of trickery and falsehood.

I had been smothering my feelings of contempt through the whole journey; but now I had seen Petra and Mount Hor, and it was a relief to have something to justify me in my own eyes in breaking through all restraint. I had caught him in the very act of baseness and villany, corrupting the faith of my servant; bribing under my own eyes, and while eating my bread, the only man on whom I could rely at all; and the proof of his treason, the accursed gold, was before me. With a loud voice I called him back to the tent, and charged him with his baseness, reproaching him that I had come into the desert upon the faith of his promises, and he had endeavoured to corrupt my servant before my eyes ; I told him that he was false and faithless; that I had before distrusted him, but that I now despised him, and would not give him a para till we got to Hebron, nor would I tell him how much I would give him then; but that, if he would take himself off and leave me alone in the desert, I would pay him the price of his camels; I assured him that, bad as he represented them, I did not believe there was a worse Arab in all his tribe than himself; and finally, throwing open my trunk, I told him that I did not fear him or all his tribe; that I had there a certain sum of money, which should belong to the man who should conduct me to Hebron, whoever he might be, and clothes which would not suit an Arab's back; that I knew I was in his power; but that, if they killed me, they could not get more than they could without it; and added, turning my pistols in my belt, that they should not get it while I could defend it. All this, passing through an interpreter, had given me time to cool; and, before coming to my grand climax, though still highly indignant, I was able to observe the effect of my words. At the first glance I saw that I had the vantage ground, and that the consciousness of being detected in his baseness sealed his lips. I am inclined to think that he.would have been disgraced in the eyes of his tribe if they had been acquainted with the circumstances; for, instead of resenting my passionate language, he earnestly begged me to lower my voice, and frequently looked out of the tent to see if any of his companions were near. Keep cool is a good maxim, generally, in a man's walk through life, and it is particularly useful with the Bedouins in the desert; but there are times when it is good to be in a passion, and this was one of them. Without attempting to resent what I said, even by word or look, he came up to me, kissed my hand, and swore that he would never mention the subject of bucksheesh again until we got to Hebron, and he did not. I retained my command over him through the whole journey, while he was constantly at my side, taking my horse, holding my stirrup, and in every way trying to make himself useful. I am not sure, how ever, but that, in his new character of a sycophant, he was worse than before. A sycophant in civilized life, where the usages of society admit, and perhaps demand, a certain degree of unmeant civility, is the most contemptible thing that crawls; but in a wild Arab it was intolerable. I really despised him, and made no secret of it; and sometimes, rash and imprudent as was the bare thought, it was with the greatest difficulty that I could keep from giving him my foot. After he had gone out that night, Paul sewed twenty gold pieces in the collar of my jacket, and I left the rest of my money open in my trunk.

I have frequently been astonished at the entire absence of apprehension which accompanied me during the whole of this journey. I fortunately observed, at the very first, an intention of exaggerating its danger; and this and other little things carried me into the other extreme to such a degree, that perhaps my eyes were closed against the real dangers. Among all the pictures and descriptions of robbers and bandits that I have seen, I have never met with anything so unprepossessing as a party of desert Arabs coming down upon the traveller on their dromedaries; but one soon gets over the effect of their dark and scowling visages; and, after becoming acquainted with their weapons and bodily strength, a man of ordinary vigour, well armed, feels no little confidence in himself among them. They are small in stature, under our middle size, and thin almost to emaciation. Indeed, the same degree of spareness in Europeans would be deemed the effect of illness or starvation; but with them it seems to be a mere drying up of the fluids, or, as it were, an attraction between skin and bone, which prevents flesh from insinuating itself between. Their breast-bones stand out very prominently; their ribs are as distinctly perceptible as the bars of a gridiron, and their empty stomachs seem drawn up till they touch the back-bone; and their weapons, though ugly enough, are far from being formidable. The sheik was the only one of our party who carried pistols, and I do not believe they could have been discharged without picking the flints once or twice; the rest had swords and matchlock guns; the latter, of course, not to be fired without first striking a light, which is not the work of a moment; and although these inconvenient implements do well enough for contests with their brother Bedouins, the odds are very much against them when they have to do with a well-armed Frank; two pairs of good pistols and a double-barrelled gun would have been a match for all our matchlock muskets. Besides all this, one naturally feels a confidence in himself after being some time left to his own resources; a development of capacities and energies which he is entirely unconscious of possessing, until he is placed in a situation to call them out. A man must have been in the desert alone, and beyond the reach of help, where his voice can never reach the ears of his distant friends, with a strong and overwhelming sense that everything depends upon himself, his own coolness and discretion; and such is the elasticity of the human character, that his spirit, instead of sinking and quailing as it would once have done under difficulties and dangers incomparably less, rises with the occasion; and as he draws his sash or tightens his sword belt, he stretches himself to his full length, and is prepared and ready for any emergency that may befall him. Indeed, now that I have returned to the peaceful occupations of civilized life, I often look back with a species of mirthful feeling upon my journey in the desert as a strange and amusing episode in my life; and, when laying my head on my quiet pillow, I can hardly believe that, but a few months ago, I never slept without first placing my pistols carefully by my side, and never woke without putting forth my hand to ascertain that they were near and ready for instant use.

I had scarcely mounted the next morning before one of the men came up to me, and, telling me that he intended to return home, asked for. his bucksheesh. I looked at the sheik, who was still sitting on the ground, enjoying a last sip of coffee, and apparently taking no notice of us, and it immediately occurred to me that this was another scheme of his to find out how much I intended to give. The idea had no sooner occurred to me than I determined to sustain the tone I had assumed the night before; and I therefore told the fellow that I should not pay any one a piaster until I arrived at Hebron. This occasioned a great clamour; the sheik still remained silent, but all the others took up the matter, and I do not know how far it would have gone if I had persisted. I was the only one mounted; and, having given my answer, I turned my horse's head, and moved on a few paces, looking over my shoulder, however, to watch the effect; and when I saw them still standing, as if spellbound, in the unfinished act, one of mounting a dromedary, another of arranging the baggage, and all apparently undecided what to do, I reflected that no good come from the deliberations of' such men, and began to repent somewhat of the high tone I had assumed. I only wanted a good excuse to retrace my steps; and, after a moment's reflection, I laid hold of something plausible enough for immediate use. The man who wanted to return was rather a favourite with me-the same who had carried me on his shoulders up the stream in the entrance of Petra-and, returning suddenly, as if the thing had just occurred to me, I called him to me, and told him that, although I would not pay him for accompanying me on my journey, as it was not yet ended, still, for his extra services in Petra, I would not let him go home destitute; that I loved him-by which I meant that I liked him, an expression that would have been entirely too cold for "the land of the East and the clime of the sun," or, as I should rather say, for the extravagant and inflated style of the Arabs-that if the same thing had happened with any of the others, I would not have given him a para; and now he must understand that I only paid him for his services in Petra. This seemed natural enough to the other Bedouins, for they all knew that this man and I had returned from the defile the best friends in the world, calling each other brother, &c.; and, in the end, the whole affair turned out rather fortunately; for, understanding me literally that I paid only for the day in Petra, although not understanding the rule of three as established in the books of arithmetic, they worked out the problem after their own fashion, "If one day gives so much, what will so many days give?; and were exceeding satisfied with the result. Indeed, I believe I might at any time have stopped their mouths, and relieved myself from much annoyance, by promising them an extravagant sum on my arrival at Hebron; but this I would not do. I had not, from the first, held out to them any extravagant expectations, nor would I do so then; perhaps, after all, not so much from a stern sense of principle, as from having conceived a feeling of strong though smothered indignation and contempt for the sheik. Indeed, I should not have considered it safe to tell him what I intended to give him; for I soon saw that the amount estimated by Mr. Gliddon and myself was very far from being sufficient to satisfy his own and his men's extravagant expectations. My apparent indifference perplexed the sheik, and he was sorely confounded by my valiant declaration, "There is my trunk; all that is in it is yours when we arrive at Hebron; rob me or kill me, and you get no more;" and, though he could not conceal his eagerness and rapacity, he felt himself trammelled; and my plan was to prolong his indecision, and postpone our denouement until our arrival at Hebron. Still, it was very unpleasant to be travelling upon these terms with my protectors, and I was exceedingly glad when the journey was over.

We were again journeying along the valley in an oblique direction. In the afternoon we fell in with a caravan for Gaza. It may be that I wronged the sheik; but I had the idea that, whenever we saw strangers, his deep and hurried manner of pronouncing El Arab, his fixing himself in his saddle, poising his spear, and getting the caravan in order, frequently accompanying these movements with the cautioning words not to be afraid, that he would fight for me till death, were intended altogether for effect upon me. Whether he had any influence or not with the caravan for Gaza, I cannot say; but I know that I would have been glad to leave the wandering tribes of the land of Idumea, and go with my new companions to the ancient city of the Philistines. While we moved along together, Paul and myself got upon excellent terms with them, and consulted for a good while about asking them to take us under their escort. I have no doubt they would have done it willingly, for they were a fine, manly set of fellows ; but we were deterred by the fear of involving them in a quarrel, if not a fight, with our own men.

The valley continued the same as before presenting sandy hillocks, thorn-bushes, gullies, the dry beds of streams, and furnishing all the way incontestible evidence that it had once been covered with the waters of a river. To one travelling along that dreary road as a geologist, every step opens a new page in the great book of Nature; carrying him back to the time when all was chaos, and darkness covered the face of the earth; the impressions it conveys are of a confused mass of matter settling into "form and substance," the earth covered with a mighty deluge, the waters retiring, and leaving bare the mountains above him, and a rolling river at his feet; and, by the regular operation of natural causes, the river contracting and disappearing, and for thousands of years leaving its channel-bed dry. And again, he who, in the wonders around him, seeks the evidences of events recorded in the sacred volume, here finds them in the abundant tokens that the shower of fire and brimstone which descended upon the guilty cities of Sodom and Gomorrah stopped the course of the Jordan, and formed it into a pestilential lake, and left the dry bed of a river in the desolate valley in which he is journeying. This valley is part of the once populous land of Idumea; in the days of Solomon, the great travelled highway by which he received the gold of Ophir for the temple; and by which, in the days of imperial Rome, the wealth of India was brought to her doors.

About the middle of the day, as usual, the sheik rode ahead, and, striking his spear in the sand, he had coffee prepared before we came up. While we were sitting around the spear, two of our camels so far forgot the calm dignity of their nature, and their staid, quiet habits, as to get into a fight; and one of them, finding himself likely to come off second best, took to his heels, and the other after him; they were baggage camels, one being charged with my boxes of provisions and housekeeping apparatus, and his movements indicated death to crockery. I will not go into particulars, for eggs, rice, macaroni, and lamp-oil make a bad mixture; and though the race and fight between the loaded camels were rather ludicrous, the consequence was by no means a pleasant thing in the desert.

The next morning we had another camel scene; for one of the combatants was stretched upon the sand, his bed of death. The Bedouins had examined him, arid, satisfied that the hand of death was upon him, they left him to breathe his last alone. The camel is to the Arab a treasure above all price. He is the only animal by nature and constitution framed for the desert, for he alone can travel several days without eating or drinking. Every part of him is useful; his milk is their drink, his flesh their food, and his hair supplies materials for their rude garments and tents. Besides this, the creature is domesticated with the Bedouin ; grows up in-his tent, feeds from his hand, kneels down to receive his burden, and rises as if glad to carry his master; and, in short, is so much a part of a Bedouin's family, that often, in speaking of himself, the Bedouin will say that he has so many wives, so many children, and so many camels. All these things considered, when this morning they knew that the camel must die, I expected, in a rough way, something like Sterne's picture of the old man and his ass. But I saw nothing of the kind; they left him in the last stages of his struggle with the great enemy with as much indifference, I was going to say, as if he had been a brute; and he was a brute; but it was almost worth a passing tear to leave even a brute to die alone in the desert; one that we knew, that had travelled with us, and formed part of our little world; but the only lament the sheik made was, that they had lost twenty dollars, and we left him to die in the sand. I could almost have remained myself to close his eyes. The vultures were already hovering over him, and once I went, back and drove them away; but I have no doubt that, before the poor beast was dead, the horrid birds had picked out his eyes, and thrust their murderous beaks into his brain.

It was, as usual, a fine day. Since we left Akaba we had a continued succession of the most delightful weather I had ever experienced. I was, no doubt, peculiarly susceptible to the influence of weather. With a malady constantly banging about me, if I drooped, a bright sun and an unclouded sky could at any time revive me and more than once, when I have risen flushed and feverish, and but little refreshed with sleep, the clear, pure air of the morning has given me a new life. From dragging one leg slowly after the other, I have fairly jumped into the saddle, and my noble Arabian, in such cases, always completed what the fresh air of the morning had begun. Indeed, I felt then that I could not be too thankful for those two things, uncommonly fine weather and an uncommonly fine horse; and I considered that it was almost solely those two that sustained me on that journey. It is part of the historical account of the Bedouins horses, that the mares are never sold. My sheik would have sold his soul for a price; and, as soon as he saw that I was pleased with my mare, he wanted to sell her to me; and it was singular and amusing, in chaffering for this animal, to mark how one of the habits of bargain-making, peculiar to the horse-jockey with us, existed in full force among the Arabs; he said that he did not want to sell her; that at Cairo he had been offered two hundred and fifty dollars, a new dress, and arms complete, and he would not sell her; but if I wanted her, there being nothing he would not do for me, &c., I might have her.

The sheik's was an extraordinary animal. The saddle had not been off her back for thirty days; and the sheik, himself a most restless creature, would dash off suddenly a dozen times a day, on a full run across the valley, up the sides of a mountain, round and round our caravan, with his long spear poised in the air, and his dress streaming in the wind; and when he returned and brought her to a walk at my side, the beautiful animal would snort and paw the ground as if proud of what she had done, and anxious for another course. I could almost imagine I saw the ancient war-horse of Idumea, so finely described by Job----"His neck clothed with thunder. Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? the glory of his nostrils is terrible. He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength; he goeth on to meet the armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he back from the sword. The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield. He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage; neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet. He saith among the trumpets, ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting." <

Nothing showed the hardiness of these horses more than their drinking. Several times we came to deposites of rainwater left in the hollow of a rock, so foul and dirty that I would not have given it to a dog; and while their sides were white with foam, the sheik would take the bits out of their months, and sit down with the bridle in his hands, and let them drink their fill; and I could not help thinking that a regular-bred English groom, accustomed to insinuate a wet sponge in the mouth of a heated horse, would have been amazed and horrified at such a barbarian usage. These two horses were twelve and twenty years old respectively; and the former was more like a colt in playfulness and spirit, and the other like a horse of ten with us and the sheik told me that he could count upon the services of both until they were thirty-five. Among all the recommendations of the Arabian horse, I know none greater than this; I have known a man, from long habit, conceive a liking for a vicious jade that no one else would mount; and one can imagine bow warm must be the feeling, when, year after year, the best of his race is the companion of the wandering Arab, and the same animal may bear him from the time when be can first poise a spear until his aged frame can scarcely sustain itself in the saddle.

Before leaving the valley, we found in one of the gullies a large stone veined in that peculiar manner which I had noticed at Petra; it had been washed down from the mountains of Wady Moussa, and the Arab told me that stone of the same kind was found nowhere else. Towards evening we had crossed the valley, and were at the foot of the mountains of Judea, in the direction of the southern extremity of the Dead Sea. That evening, I remember, I noticed a circumstance which called to my mind the wonderful accounts handed down to us by Strabo and other ancient historians, of large cities built of salt having stood at the southern extremity of the Dead Sea and the valley beyond. In the escapade of' our runaway camels, bringing about the catastrophe which one of' them had since expiated with his life, they had mingled together in horrible confusion, contrary to all the rules of art, so many discordant ingredients, that a great portion of' my larder was spoiled; and, among other things, salt, almost as necessary to man as bread, had completely lost it's savour. But the Bedouins, habituated to wanting almost everything, knew where to find all that their barren country could give and one of them leaving the tents for a few moments, returned with a small quantity that he had picked for immediate use, being a cake or incrustation about as large as the head of a barrel; and I afterward saw regular strata of it, and in large quantities, in the sides of the mountains.