account of its inaccessible position, remote from the ruins of the city. Laborde's elaborate work is well known, and his drawings, as well as those of Bartlett and Roberts, give an admirable representation of those wonderful monuments. Miss Martineau, Dr. Robinson, Dean Stanley, and many others have visited and published their accounts of Petra, and they all appear to have entered the city from the west, but I would strongly recommend future travellers to take our route from Akabah by the Wady Ithm, and make their entrance by the Sîk valley. The effects of its astonishing rocks rising up hundreds of feet from a narrow cleft, hardly half a dozen yards across in many places, the magical colouring and fantastic forms of the perpendicular sides, the subdued light in this deep ravine; above all, the extraordinary beauty of the famous Khuzneh, which bursts upon your gaze at the eastern end of the Sîk, produce an irresistible impression upon the mind of the traveller.

Many attempts have been made to connect Petra with Kadesh, where the Israelites abode some days, and from whence the spies went to examine the Promised Land. It was a very important resting-place of the host of Israel; for there occurred the rebellion of Korah, the angry demand of the people for water, and Miriam and Aaron both died in this place. They had wandered from Sinai over the desert of the Tîh, or wilderness of Paran,' thence descended into the Arabah, or 'wilderness of Zin,' and upon the refusal of the King of Edom to allow them to pass through his territory, they proceeded to Ezion-Geber, and so circumvented the

kingdom of Edom and entered Moab. Stanley inclines to the belief that Kadesh, the holy place,' and Petra are identical; but Dr. Robinson fixes upon Ain-el-Weibeh, in the Arabah, more than two days' journey out of Petra, as the site of this important station of the Children of Israel. As to this and many other questions which will occur to the traveller who visits Petra, I must refer to the exhaustive works of Laborde, Robinson, Irby and Mangles, Stanley, and others. Our stay was far too hurried and disturbed to permit of a proper examination into the marvellous ruins; all that I can attempt to give is a mere sketch of the more prominent features which they present. Whether the great monuments are temples or tombs, how old they are, and by whom they were constructed, to what architecture some of the decorations belong, and many other questions, can only be solved by a lengthened stay amidst these extraordinary remains. Egypt and India contain specimens of structures wrought out of the solid rock, after the fashion of those at Petra. But how this great commercial centre of trade came to be adorned in so magnificent a style may well excite surprise, as indeed does the fact of such a shut in, inaccessible spot being fixed upon for the capital of a trading country.

CHAPTER IX.

PETRA.

THE chief entrance to Petra in the days of its glory was by the remarkable gorge called the Sîk. Wady Mûsa is formed by the junction of two valleys, which unite below Eljy. At first it is broad, and its sloping banks are cultivated by the aid of the stream which runs along the valley, until it enters the dark ravine between precipitous cliffs. We were all impatience to proceed to the ruins of the city, but our dragoman assured us that without the sheikh, or some one representing him, it would be folly to attempt to go. We were therefore obliged to content ourselves, in the meantime, with examining a tomb of some size in the valley, a little distance from the opening of the Sik. In front of the façade of the tomb, which has pilasters at the angles and a door in the centre, is a court, hewn in the rock. Two porticoes with Doric columns, all hewn in the rock, are seen on each side of the court, whose entrance is screened by a stone wall. The interior of the tomb itself is about 45 feet in length, but there are no sculptures or decorations to be seen. After examining this, we were thankful to see the sheikh, accom

panied by two men, all well armed with lances, guns, and swords, ride up and salute us with much cordiality. It was now about eleven o'clock, and we were anxious to make the most of our time, so at once started for the city.

The lower part of Wady Mûsa, where it joins the Sîk, has numerous façades and doorways cut in the rocks, ornamented in various ways with pilasters, mouldings, and remains of friezes. We noticed three pyramidal monuments on the right, apparently solid masses of rock, about 16 feet square at the base. On the left is another singular monument with a number of pillars in the façade, the lower tier of Ionic architecture, and the whole surmounted in a recess by four slender and tall pyramids. A doorway, decorated with flowers and triglyphs over the entablature, admits to a chamber of moderate size. A little farther on we saw the remains of that triumphal arch, springing from one side of the chasm to the other, at a great height above our heads, which has so impressed all travellers with admiration. Its inaccessible situation makes it difficult to examine this remarkable bridge thus reared aloft by some fairy hand. But we were now far more impressed with the extraordinary character of the defile, along whose depths we slowly wound our way. In width only a few yards, the sides of the gorge are vast precipices of strangely-tinted rock, which constantly overlap the passage below, and shut out the light of the sun. Sometimes the lower tier of dark rocks will be succeeded by higher ranges of red cliffs, of fantastic and jagged outline, whose dizzy heights are hung with all manner of bright

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green streaming caper plants, luxurious fig trees, feathery tamarisks, and other bushes. All of a sudden, the overarching cliffs will part just sufficiently to disclose a streak of intensely blue sky, and more rocky altitudes bathed in the glowing sunshine, which never penetrates the awful gloom below. The bed of this defile is the course of the stream, and in many places it is almost choked up with the masses of laurels and oleanders, whose beautiful crimson flowers delight the eye. In many parts of the ravine we observed traces of the pavement, with which, when Petra was in its glory, this almost subterraneous passage was covered. The floods have nearly swept away the square paving-stones, but enough remains to show the care with which the work was performed. You see also the small aqueduct for supplying the city with water from the stream below Eljy, remains of which can be traced at intervals on the sides of the defile. The channel, which is sometimes a deep groove cut in the rock, at other times a conduit of earthen pipes joined together with mortar, is seen some 20 or 30 feet above the bed of the stream. Many tombs and niches cut in the rock are passed, but they are mostly small and very much defaced, hardly any feature being traceable except a mouldering pillar or cornice.

But the astonishing feature of the whole is the remarkable colouring of the rocks in many places. The stone is exceedingly friable, often crumbling away like sand when touched, but its brilliant colouring baffles description. Side by side, on the sloping face of a rock, will be seen crimson,