Robert Leslie Morris Letters Transcription. Volume 2 25 March to 27th June 1862 Akaba to Austria Transcribed by Norah Cooper. Notes on the Letters At a few points in the text, a spindly handwriting in pencil has been inserted above a line and often prefaced with ? Those are included below within ho,o ked brackets { }. e v Square brackets [ ] indicate insertions by me i h c d r A word followed by an attached question indicate unceArtainty inr the reading – e.g. o jarpic? e f x r O t A full stop is rendered by a line thus – n e , e C Original letters are here copied out by … g t e s l I have retained his use of capitals or alower caosle even where the reverse would have been expected. Sometimes indicated by ‘E(sic)’. C e s &c for etc dl y' d n i o Likewise I have retaineMd his punctuation. t n © A Am unable to find the symbol that is used in the diaries to denote “and”. So I use ‘&” instead. t S Some words have been underlined in pencil in the original and that is reproduced here in the same way. Pages blank until Pdf 3 Pdf 3 Akaba, March 25th 1862 On Thursday March 6th, we left Cairo late in the afternoon, bid farewell to the Nile, from whom we accepted a parting gift of 4 barrels of water, and started to visit his old enemy the desert. After a short ride we reached our camp near the Tomb of the Caliphs. It is a curious scene, a night encampment, with the swarthy Bedouins squatting round their fires, and behind them, their camels lying side by side, like vessels stranded in a harbour. It took us three long days travel to reach Suez (a day’s journey is from 9 to 10 hours) with nothing in sight by day but blue unclouded sky above, and barren yellow, pebbly waste below, for the desert is not as a rule sandy, there is only one tract of sand in all the Peninsula of Sinai. The live produce of the desert consists of rats, scorpions, snakes of all sorts, moths and flies by hundreds in the evening of every shape and colour, and among the mountains, wolves, hyenas, foxes, gazelles & ibexes. In the beds of the winter watercourses, grow all sorts of stun,ted shrubs, and some e sweet scented little flowers. This is all that the camels have to subsvist on, except when food is i more plentiful near the springs of water here and there, and our hdromedaries will sometimes c race for a bit of green in the distance. There are two acacia trees betweden Cairo and Suez, r during A r o e f x Pdf 4 r O t n 30 hours travel. The camel, instead of being that pattern of meekness which copyslips affirm, e , is the impersonation of cowardice, & abject servility, wheich the quiet look of his its eye is C g only hypocritical; It roars and growls continually, and bites when it can. The dromedary bears t e the same relation to it, as a riding horse tso a pack lditto, and is an improvement on the camel. Mine had not been ridden till this seasoan, being oqluite young; it is very docile, goes by the E C name of Gentle Jenny, and knows me well, often licking my ear as I sit on the sand, reading and holding her rope bridle. I wiseh I coulds picture to you our life out here, but it is so thoroughly unlike any thing Edulropean, yi't is made up so much by the air and the sky and rocks d n & colours, that the mere facts of our daily routine are nothing without them. A little before i o M six and sunrise in the morning wet are at breakfast round our little deal table in the open air: n many of our camels ©are alreadAy laden, and are sauntering off by ones and twos across the plain, with tents and turkey s, charcoal & chickens, basins & bedsteads, tables, wine, oranges, t biscuits, water, maccaronSi (sic), and fifty other articles, all slung in their panniers; of course every thing is very portable; five chests carry all the glass, plates, preserved meats, table cloths &c, the iron beds fold Pdf 5 up into umbrella cases, tables turn up like camp stools, (camp stools form our chairs) our kitchen is an iron trivet 3 feet long, with boxes for charcoal. Our nationality is represented by a small union Jack in the centre of the camp. Well, the dishes are washed and the teapot packed up, and we follow the luggage camels, of which there are about 14. Our lively dromedaries soon overtake them, and we rest an hour for lunch, under a rock for shade, if possible; and after passing them again we ride on to choose a spot for encamping on. In half an hour the three tents are up again, the turkeys and fowl are fed and watered, the flag flying, the Arabs baking their bread under their fires, and smoking their pipes, & dinner rapidly preparing. (Our cook, dragoman & servant sleep in the third tent.) The saddle is a wooden structure with a pommel in front and behind; on it first come a pair of small saddle bags of beans for the camel, next another larger and gayer pair with the few clothes & books I shall 2 trouble this side of Beyrout (whither all the heavy luggage has gone by sea.) Over this is a gay Turkey carpet, which is spread on the sand at midday for lunch, and at night for flooring, and above all is perched your humble servant. From the first pommel hang a pair of stirrups, occasionally useful, though we generally cross our legs over Pdf 6 the neck of the animal, a sunshade, white lined with blue and a hippopotamus-hide-whip: on the hinder (sic) one is slung a gun and a little bag, containing veil, goggles, pipe, books &c; also a leather water bottle. My costume is a suit of flannel, a silk scarf around my waist, and a felt hat wound round with a calico turban. Out thermometer often has a range of 60 degrees, between 6 am. and 2 pm. and we were three days ago riding under a sun at 132o. Generally in the shade, it varies from about 35o to 95o. We often have a gentle breeze which makes the heat more supportable, but the last few days we have had a touch of the khampseen [khamaseen], a hot wind from the south, which is most oppressive. Now then for our route again. Suez is about the most dismal miserable place with any pretension of township I ever saw. It boasts a good hotel, large stores of the P & O company, and no, water but what comes e from Cairo by sail. The engine brings its own supply; and there is nvot a tree for miles: we i drank bottled beer in Suez for the last time before Jerusalem. (Inh these notes I shall have c plenty of every day incidents to recount, without entering into controvdersies, as to where the r Israelites crossed the Red Sea, what the manna was, their fAurther rourte, the waters of Mara o [Marah] &c &c. By all means read Stanley’s Sinai ande Palestinef. His is a very fair x r O t n Pdf 7 e , résumé of all the arguments, and is more readable than Reobinson; (We have followed C g Stanley’s route up to this point, and shall continue to do so: fancy as you read, we are there instead of him, and draw the same conclussti ons frolme the spot as he does.) On the 11th while lunching under sunshades and a sun at a97 in the oolpen desert, of cold turkey and dates, up rode E C to us a monk from Sinai on his way to the great convent at Cairo. He talked very little Arabic, and Greek, his modern versus ouer ancient,s was our only conversational link. He was a pleasant fellow, turned out podmlegranatye' and almond, and in turn attacked our oranges and d n claret. Ayun Musa or the wells of Moses was the first stopping place for water; {marsh?} like i o M most desert spring they are bracktish, but they make a fruitful oasis of the sandy grit. Here we n first saw tamarisks, f©rom whicAh a spurious manna is produced, we were then in Wady Side, the wilderness of Shur of th e Bible. On the 12th we reached the traditional waters of Marah t {Elim}, with a few shrubSs to mark their presence, but it was still open desert travelling between the Table land of the Gt Desert of El Tih on the one side, and the gulf of Suez in the distance on the other, backed by the mountains of Egypt. The 13th was a white chalk day with us, for after gradually winding into the mountains, and down the long valley of Pdf 8 good things “ Wady Tailyibeh, and its coloured cliffs, we emerged on the gulf of Suez again and camped on the sea shore. {To say that we rushed into the water like}young ducks only a European similitude but we skuttled into the sea like crocodiles fresh from their eggs; we were afterwards told of sharks being always on the watch, but we have seen nothing of them either there or in the Gulf of Akabah. On the 14th the scenery had entirely changed. Steep rocky passes, over natural stairs of limestone, and then inland again up valleys decorated with the Sinaitic Inscriptions, which to us seem only the scribblings of foreign slaves, obliged to work in the old Egyptian mines of Mount Sinai. The language may be one used by the Nabateans, the old inhabitants of Petra. (The theory that they are the work of pilgrims to Serbal and Sinai, will hardly hold good; but vide pages of Stanley). We were now quite 3 among the mines of Egyptians long since closed, but we dined that night with a Major Macdonald, who is working turquoise diggings in Wady Mughareh; he is a great king there, insists on all travellers dining with him, gave us much valuable information (& knew Mr and Mrs Pierce Seaman of Gower Street;) on the 15th we passed on through Wady Mukatteb (the written valley, so called from many more inscriptions there) to Wady Feiran, the Pdf 9 Paradise of the Bedouins, the great oasis of the whole Peninsula and the possible, but not very probable site of Rephidim, for there is a natural supply of good water here all the year round. Here we spent Sunday the 16th, and some of the party went up Mt Serbal, whence they had a splendid view, & were particularly struck with the variegated colouring of the mountain. On Monday 17th we encamped under Mount Horeb, or Ras Sufsafeh as it is now called. We left the baggage in the morning, to wind round by the longer but easier route of the Wady es Shekh [Sheikh], and struck off ourselves through Nakb Hawq [Nakb-el-Hawa] or the Pass of the wind, a glorious bit of mountain ravine, coming out at last on the great plain of Er Rahah, with Mount Horeb straight in front of us, rising in a perpendicular heig,ht of 1500 feet. Here e two millions of people, might all have encamped, and all have beenv in view of the mount, and i here all the requirements of the Biblical account are fully satisfihed. Here we sojourned till c Thursday morning, and worked hard for our two days & a half: We visdited the Convent with r its Church and its Mosque, refectory and Distillery, GardenA & Charnrel House Pictures of o Negro Madonnas, Chapel of the Burning Bush, examineed the ancfient books in the Library, x r O t n Pdf 10 e , bought manna and Sinai dates (stuffed with almonds insetead of stones) and drank “araki” a C g spirit distilled from dates, while we listened, per interpreter, to the legends of the convent, and the martyr St Katherine of Alexandrisat. We clilmebed Jebel Musa, the Horeb of the monks, to satisfy ourselves it was not the Horeab of the Bolible; we climbed a peak called Ras Sufsafeh E C by the guides, to find what we hoped to prove the true Horeb, but it cost us, that is two only, several hours perilous climbing toe reach asn other peak, and then I was the only one that reached the top: but the view fdrlom therey' was worth everything: Three plains, and not one d n only, lay immediately below me; it is the most commanding point in the whole peninsula; i o M (whether Stanley was on this I catnnot find from his book, but hope to meet him again at n Jerusalem; at Cairo h©e said heA wished he could come over the ground again.) Jebel Katherine took me and a guide 3½ ho urs to climb up it, but from the top there was a wonderful view of t the whole peninsula, bothS seas, and the Egyptian mountains on one side, the Arabian on the other, clear and sharp against the sky; the hour at the top seemed a quarter only. Pdf 11 There is no happy distance here, it is all sharply defined, but melts away into a sort of mauve blue {or very pale cerise}. I could trace all our wanderings among the mass of mountains below me. To the south Um Shammer [Umm Shaumar], the highest mountain of all, shuts off the view of Ras Mohammed the southernmost peak. Um Shammer, has not been climbed till this year {62} by two Oxfordmen, but I hear the view is not so good as from Serbal or Katherine. There is a sort of Via Sacra at Sinai, where the monks have grouped most of the traditional spots, the mould (sic) of the golden calf & the spot where Aaron stood(,) Jethro’s well, the Rock of Moses, the Cleft of Moses, the Chapels of Elijah & Elisha, the cave of Elijah, the pit of Korah, the print of the foot of Mahomet’s camel. Many of the above could not be connected with Sinai at all, e.g. Moses’ rock was at Rephidim, a day’s march away. The rock itself {which he is said to have struck} is rough red granite, with a seam of finer granite “the mark of the water” running through it. (March 28th.) The 20th saw us off again 4 early in the morning, with fresh camels, and concomitant drivers, the latter far fiercer than our late friends, who are partially civilized, as once a year they visit Cairo with charcoal: this they collect during their wanderings in Pdf 12 search of pasture and water; it is chiefly acacia wood, the Shikim [Sikkim] wood of the Bible, and the tree of the burning bush. We passed the great burial ground of our Tawarah Arabs, round the tomb of a Sheikh. A Sheikh’s tomb, often met with in Egypt, {& the desert} is a square room with a dome roof. Outside it is rudely whitewashed inside it is hung with little boats, beads, shreds of coloured cloth, shells &c. In the centre of the floor is the grave itself. On past a little brackish well, over bleak rugged hills, through bare dry ravines till we drive again in among the mountain defiles, every wind in the road seaming to block us in, till a little outlet shows itself, between the overhanging rocks. All is sublime and (sombre), barren & desolate. In one of these corners we pitch our tents, and take as naturally to our dinner and beds, as if our Cook was a good plain fat English woman {cook in England}, instead of a black Mohammedan from Nubia, and as if our house maids name was, Betsy Jane, instead of e Hassan Said. Next day we reached Ain Huderah, the probable Hazevroth of the wanderings, i and on our way passed Hermel Haggaz, a rock standing alone anhd almost covered with (these c aids to controversy) the d r A r o Pdf 13 e f x “Sinaitic inscriptions”. There are rude illustrations toro of camOels, ostriches, ibexes with horns t n of gigantic proportions, and other comic drawings of passe rs by about 3000 years ago. The e , 22nd brought us through some of the finest scenery of thee whole peninsula, Wady el Ain, and C g Wady watir narrow into the bed of the winter torrents (often 7 or 8 feet deep), between lofty t e cliffs of granite porphyry and sandstone. sBright grleen asphodel grows on the red, black and white rock, and tamarisks, cling to the acorners aonld crevices. Below is the pale yellow sand E C winding among granite boulders, above is the narrow strip of the sky almost shut out altogether. The last wind brings ues down tso the sea; instead of rocky wilderness, there is the rippling blue sea, its murmur adlmong they' pebbles on the shore instead of the utter silence of d n the mountain glens, & above all there is a cool sea breeze to fan our cheeks, scorched as it is i o M with the heat thrown back on us ftrom every rock. It was a long days journey, nearly 11 hours n ride, but there was n©o feeling Atired then. There was something of friendship in the heave of the wave, the throb of an ol d acquaintance’s heart that spoke of other shores than that of t Akabah. (“It S Pdf 14 only shows what a wonderful thing is nature said Mr Squeers, Ah! Said he, growing in enthusiasm a rum’un is human nature”). [Wackford Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby]. But the beauty of that spot is not only the sea, though it is so blue that blue black the Arab phrase for black, can only describe it, so clear that every shell, pebble & coral at the bottom is visible, but there are all the mountain barriers running down from Sinai to the coast; of every depth of shade and colour; there is the shore stream for miles, with endless varieties of shells , and corals of all sizes, from some weighing 3 or 4 lbs, to tiny shells like hollow pins heads; there is above all, the opposite shore some 20 miles across (3 in England would look about the same distance) with the Arabian hills of every rich tint imaginable, between pale mountain blue, and deep mountain purple, yet so ethereal and fairy like, like some gauze screen against the sky. On this shore we spent the Sunday. On Monday, we came over a wonderful mountain pass of Huweirmerat, a few hours rock climbing and slipping and tumbling and sliding, reached the shore again, past the island of Hureirich, a little like St Michael’s Mount 5 in Penzance Bay with its battlemented cliffs, long time deserted, and after another day of 11 hours work, pitched within two hours of Akaba which we reached on Tuesday morning. Akaba itself Pdf 15 site of the ancient Ezion Geber, owes its present existence to its palm grove, three springs of water, and a few Bedouins who consent to live within mud walls for the sake of the fishing here. They have no boats but float out with the tide on a log and paddle themselves home again, with a branch of their universally useful palm. Camel arrangement, contracts with new sheikhs he compel us to wait here till Monday 31st. So we are resting, picking up shells, bathing and almost lapsing into Arab inactivity. This is the farthest point to which our Tawarah can take us with any safety; the next tract of country between this & Petra, belongs to the Alawin Arabs, the most lawless, impudent set of vagabonds on the face of the desert; their one redeeming feature is that they have no cannibal propensities; they are content with killing their enemies. They have one law, the terrible blood for blood revenge. Jan ’57 the travellers only escaped with their lives, and since that year Petra has b,een “closed”. Last year e [-/61} some negotiations between the most important sheikhs werev renewed, and we hope to i “open” Petra again. “We” consist of four parties, in all 15 travelhlers. There are 6 Americans, c 2 being young ladies (no comparison with English) 8 Englishmen an(dd) 1 Prussian. There r seems to be no possible danger this year we have guarded Aagainst anrnoyance even, begging o &c. The Sheikh e f x r O t n Pdf 16 e , of every tribe we pass through travels with us, and the laest three days have been occupied by C g these gentlemen, and our dragoman in very loud debating, talkee-talkee. pigeon. An Arab t e conference is a very striking scene, and as very noilsy one. After a quarrel breaks out, when two interceders jump up, dose the combaatants woilth coffee, make them kiss three times and E C business recommences. Outside Petra April 3rd Here we are encamped, just beyoen d the bosu nds of the Petra territory, and are waiting till the Sheikh thereof appears to escodrlt us furtyh'er. For the five days we were at Akaba, negotiations d n went on full of rascality, theft, falsehood, covetousness and cowardice, which gave us some i o M insight into the Arab character, wthen allowed to develop itself, without any interference on n the part of religion o©r civilizatAion. These desert Arabs, fear nobody and nothing, and are only less intent on deceit than on plunder. At last, the dragoman had been sufficiently bled, (i.e. t would stand it no longer)S the travellers had been satisfactorily delayed, & we started – Plots and counterplots have varied the monotony of a journey through rather tedious country. Our road has been up the Wady Arabah, 4 or 5 miles broad, hedged in by high mountains and sandy ridges, the same valley runs all up the bed of the Jordan to the north of Syria. We are now Pdf 17 turning out of the valley into the red mountains of Edom, & shall come back into it again to pursue our route. Our escort as you may guess, are a queer looking set, armed to the teeth with most extraordinary weapons; Arab guns fired with a slow match, a few {fitted with} flint & steel among the wealthiest, a trace (sic) [= brace?] or two sometimes of pistols, or small blunderbuss, a sword and a dagger. But we manage to keep them in very good humour, and a little tobacco goes a long way. At night we sometimes have had an entertainment of war dances, songs &c round their fire, and in time we may have quite a respectable troop of Bedouin Serenaders. At present it has rather a frightening character, and the King of the Cannibal Islands; in full costume, and after a good dinner, could hardly present a more 6 remarkable appearance than one or two of our leading performers. No doubt a lot of these particulars will seem very trivial & utterly unconnected with the researches of travel, but I tell you of the little incidents of our journey as I think of them; you have my impressions as they are, not as they ought to be. We value lunch just as well on the ancient site of Eziongeber, as if we were in our respective dining rooms in old England; we have caught and nursed young gazelles, have tamed & fed a desert dog, a faithful fellow traveller by day and guard by Pdf 18 night, have had alarms from wolves and Arabs, have sought shade at noon under shrubs, as thick as a gooseberry bush in November, have tied up & flogged a thief, who stole Arab bread, and yet have maintained our personal identity all the time. And we have prejudice & eccentricity too, imported neat from England. There is a Roman Catholic lady who hugs a lap dog on her camel, and talks about morning calls; there is a literary gentleman aged 39, but bowed down, and dried up by books and controversies till he looks 63 [= Buckle?]. He is great on rationalisms and theories of civilization, is afraid of a camel, but rides a donkey, taking an extra camel for his food and water. He has also a goat, as fre,sh milk every morning e is to him a necessary (sic) of life even in the desert. I might continuve the catalogue much i further, but this will show you we are still substantially the sameh, except perhaps being c sunburnt, and as to our dragomen, they might be supposed to have flesdh and paling like r ourselves, did they not wear actual and incontrovertible turAbans, talkr Arabic, and don o petticoat trousers. The Bedouins are further off in the geenus, manf, for they tell the hour of the x day by the length of their shadow. Monday 7th. Nevrer mind Othe above nonsense; that was t n written before we saw Petra; now we are quite clear of it a nd e , e C g Pdf 19 t e are camping in the Arabah again. The dasnger of thle visit is by no means exaggerated; owing to the considerate interference {of y’s Eanglish goolvernment} with Mehemet Ali, when he was E C subduing these people, there is no sort of government now, to keep the tribes in order. They fear neither God nor man; their hea nd is agsa inst every man, as truly now as when it was first spoken. We have had no sort odlf molestay'tion whatever; never before have travellers wandered d n unmolested among these ruins, but why? because we were fortunate enough to be able to buy i o M over the sheikhs of 4 tribes out otf the 5, and even then were obliged to post scouts out at n night in all direction©s, wanderA by day with an armed guard and travel with a large escort till we reached the plain again. Our friendly tribes used to quarrel among themselves, draw their t swords, light their slow mSatches, and flourish their war clubs, while continually noisy conferences, were held on war measure and money division. Our camp of 12 tents, with 60 camels moored round, was pitched on a pretty grass flat on the centre of the great basin of the former city. Wild flowers grow thick every where here, and far up the mountain gullies, and the myriads of creatures, many unknown to our English eyes, creeping and crawling & flying & clinging, were past all you can imagine. Every variety of beetle, ant, moth, earwig, Pdf 20 locust, adder, lizard, caterpillar, serpent, scorpion, snail, spider, cameleon (sic) and fly were there. But I must give you all in order. On Friday, on our road into Petra, we ascended Mount Hor and made our pilgrimage to Aaron’s tomb. We were unable to enter the tomb, as the Mohammedans are particularly jealous of it, and no threat or backsheesh could open the door. The mountain is much broken up by clefts and chasms, which add to its grandeur, as well as to the difficulties of its ascent. Now we have reached the spot on which Aaron last stood. Far away to the N were the mountains of Judah, blue in the distance, that he might never tread; in the Arabah below, had been the tents and congregation of Israel, full in view of the mount; 7 with him, on the summit surrounded by peaks and slopes, jagged and gloomy, stood Moses and Eleazar. Our camels had been waiting for us on the other side of the mount, and took us to Petra in the evening. All that day, our journey lay through magnificent mountain passes. Edom shut us in, till from its dark and desolate portals, we entered among downs and flowers, bleating flocks, and musical goatherds. Yet the path still narrows and steepens, the cliffs change their white and green for the deep Petra red as they overhang us still more. They then open again to make room Pdf 21 for a sloping mountain plateau, and by this we descend into Petra itself. A huge irregular basin was the original site of the city, still traced by the heaps of stones, lying scattered among the luxuriant grass, with here & there broken walls, leaning columns, and one solitary temple. From this basin, in every direction, like the arms of a starfish, run wild mountain gullies, with cliffs of all heights from 80 to 200 feet. But the remains of the built city, are the least interesting part of the view. All round this area the cliffs are honey combed with caves, whether tombs, houses or temples, probably all three. From one point ,of view a gentleman of e our party counted about 350 such caves. And, more than this, all thve aforesaid gullies & i chasms, have been hollowed out in the same way, sometimes inh stories of caves, 3 or even 4 c one above another. These formed the real city, where no stone was laidd by human hand; and r its walls were built when the foundations of the earth wereA laid. Therre are in all stages of o presentation, according as they have been sheltered froem wind anfd rain, and in some places x the rocks, all of a soft sandstone, have naturally fallern away inOto such fantastic peaks and t n hollows, that it becomes difficult to say where man, and w here nature worked. Nothing of the e , antiquities of Egypt can convey e C g t e Pdf 22 s l the same impression of utter ruin, nor caan I fancoyl any such desolation at Pompeii or E C Herculaneum, Athens or Rome. They are all remarkable for their preservation; Petra for its devastation. Here are steps, pathse, and parsa pets, in all directions up and down the cliff, leading every where and nowhdlere, spacye's for tablets, but the tablets are gone, hollows for d n dead bodies but they have been carried off, no monument, no inscription can be found to i o M throw any light upon the past, antd now & then we drop unexpectedly on a stone cistern, a n built resevoir clay w©aterpipe oAr an aqueduct, which serve to remind us of a river, almost too complete for its greatness t o be imagined, but for these reminders. Petra has been very little t visited by Europeans (neSver till 1822 by Burckhardt, disguised as a Moslem pilgrim) and there must be still much hidden away there. In the Acropolis I discovered a manufactory of sandstone, bullets of all sizes, possibly for crossbows, which is not mentioned in any published travels, I believe. But now for the second great feature, the colours of the rocks, which are all variegated sandstone. Red and black are the prevailing colours, but besides these, chiefly in the corner where the surface is broken away, and in the interior of the tombs Pdf 23 are orange, purple, blue, lilac, pink, crimson, all shades of yellow and brown, and occasionally dazzling white. They run in parallel, cross and waving lines, in wondrous patterns according to the section of the rock, and have been likened to three things, all of which are very fairly represented at different places, mahogany, roast or rather raw flesh and watered silk. But how was this city entered? Not as we did, up and down, through passes and over plateaux from the S.W. side of the city. We will with your permission drop down 1 mile to the E in a little valley, where a shepherd boy is piping to his flocks and follow a little stream in the windings. It disappears in a mountain cliff, about 10 feet wide, and spanned 8 high up by an arch, about 10 feet wide, over which used to run an aqueduct. This is the entrance to Petra, the most wonderful chasm in the world (except perhaps the pass of Pfeffus in German Switzerland). Daylight is almost shut out, as we wander along over the remains of ancient pavements, and the colours are here in their wildest perfection, and are especially brilliant, where the sunlight reaches them along the ridge above us. This for a mile, till in front of us the cleft, suddenly ceases, we reach the top of a T and in the rock opposite us stands out in bold relief (and Pdf 24 slanting sunrays,) the rose pink temple of the Khusnh [Khasneh] (treasure). Every body who has written about Petra, has described this temple, no one who has not seen it can picture it to themselves. It looks as if it had been as suddenly built as Aladdin’s Palace, and on first seeing it, one is inclined to indulge in the same rhapsody of extravagant surprise, as was exhibited by the above gentleman’s venerable father in law. It is just one of those scenes which must be photographed on the memory for life, at the first glance, as it looks too unreal to last, as if nature had lent the rock and its colours to fairy architects for a short ha,lf hour. We noticed e that the architectural lines in part of the architrave, looked straight vonly from {the end of the i narrow pass}[of] the entrance (to the side). They have been purphosely twisted to give it the c effect of facing this spot, which it does not really do. Here the path sudddenly turns a right r angle, and soon widens into a broad amphitheatre of rocksA on one sirde, in the centre of which o is the original theatre, its benches hewn out along the ceoloured stfrips of rock; tombs, cliffs, x stairs and terraces, surrounding it. From its upper rowr, I beganO to understand how the Greeks t n and Roman could sit and appreciate e , e C g t e Pdf 25 s l acting as they did, without a false stagea or sceneorly. Nothing artificial could have given such a E C sublime effect as we had before us {nature herself put up the scenery}. On we roamed, through clefts over boulders, ande u nder arsc hes, finding new tombs, colours & dwelling houses, as we went along, till dwle begany 'to appreciate the greatness of the city, that was once d n the storehouse of the wealth of the Indies. But an end of this. I am not writing a guide book, i o M full of things I never saw, and eptithets I do not mean, or preparing a paper for the cut and dry n statistical society of ©Great BriAtain, having for its object, the dissection of nature in cold blood, and the reduction of the sub lime to Pen, Ink and Paper. You have here a few of my leading t impressions of Petra, alreSady drawn out to an unconscionable length, but as it is almost a sealed city to Europeans and few, who have been, have had such a leisurely survey of it as ourselves, you must excuse prolixity the length of my notes. (There is another great feature of Petra, the Deir or Convent, also a rock hewn temple well described by Dr Stanley, whom see for further information.) 12th. Well, we were heartily glad to be out of Petra, away from all danger of Arabs or Scorpions, the former of whom had three alarming quarrels on Sunday, one during morning service, while the latter would obligingly secrete themselves under stones in our tent floors; we have had Pdf 26 little of interest since, beyond three difficult mountain passes, and the gradual change from Syrian Arabia into Palestine. Mole hills would put in an appearance, and occasionally a new kind of wild flower or beetle, while the ground gets a general greenish tint in the distance like some of our English downs, little bushes are more figments, and now and then a ploughed field. Yesterday we left Beersheba a little to the left, but lunched close to a well very similar to it. This was the first real well of Palestine: In the desert, there is no such thing as a well, a 9 little spring is all one meets with there. It was cased to a great depth with stone, well worn by the rope of centuries. Round it were grouped women and shepherds, who were drawing water up in their skinbuckets, with plenty of splashing and shouting. These were emptied in turn into stone troughs for the sheep & goats, who drank by flocks, one waiting till another had finished, and the coming up at the shepherd’s call. How many Bible scenes did this call up, and how much are we indebted to the absence of all change of customs in the East: we have met with another instance of this lately; our camel drivers use exactly the same stick that is represented on the tombs of Thebes. The head of it sketched here, will best describe it to Pdf 27 you. Today we lunched at the ruins of Carmel, where Nabal fed his flocks, crossed the mountains near Maon and Ziph, perhaps by the very tracks that David fled from Saul by, and fairly entered Judah. The remains of vineyards now disappeared, and real cultivated vineyards and oliveyards lined the side of the valleys and we passed up the v,ale of Esheal [Jezreel?] e into Hebron where we are now encamped. We avre outside the town on the i opposite hill, close under the walls of the oldh Quarantine, now fortunately c disused. Opposite now towers the mosque of El Khdalil, the friend of God, r which is the name by which the MoslemAs know Arbraham. It is built upon o the cave of Macpelah (sic), but theye will allowf no Christian to enter it. The x Prince of Wales, with an escort of 800 soldiers, forcerd his waOy in, three days before our t n arrival here, but it appears, did not, after all see the six real sepulchres. He was only shown e , some Mahommedan sarcophagi, and the cave of Machpeelah itself has been in all probability C g walled up by them. It was a very pleasant change to see the faces of women and children t e again, and watch their gay dresses flittings to & frol, and listen to the hum of the city over the way. We spent Sunday at Hebron, and anext moronling for the first time mounted little Syrian E C horses, and galloped away e s Pdf 28 dl y' d n in our peaked saddles and scuttle stirrups, as if we had been used to them all our lives. On i o M each side of the road were remaints of vineyards, now uncultivated, but the stone ridges that n bank up the terraces ©of earth aAre tolerably perfect. In half an hour we reached Abraham’s oak, which though a tree of muc h later date, is yet one of the last remaining of the once famous t oaks of Mamre. Next weS came to Solomon’s pools, anciently Etham, where are the three grand resevoirs he constructed, to supply the temple with water. Here were probably too his gardens, within an easy distance of Jerusalem. We did not go through Bethlehem, but kept a little to the left, and passed Rachel’s tomb; the site is probably the right one, but a modern Mohammedan tomb is built there now. The Jews have a little cemetery round it, and try to get as close as possible to the graves. The next point reached, was the Convent of Mar Elias, dedicated to Elijah and Elisha. Here the former is said to have rested under the juniper tree (it is now an acacia unfortunately). But from the front porch there is a magnificent view, of little Bethlehem on the side, high up on the ridge of hills, and on the other of Jerusalem itself, that is of Mount Zion and Bezetta behind, but Mount Moriah was hid by the hill of Evil Counsel. Pdf 29 Here we halted for some time, and took in our first view and compared the actual hills with those which we carried in our mind’s eye. From here, Jerusalem looked as if it stood on a flat table land and might be taken by half an hour’s siege; but its real position unfolded itself more and more as we approached it. It does not stand high above the surrounding hills, as I 10