to the Jewish faith. See Biblical Repository, vol. iii., pp. 247-270; and Keith on the Evidence of Prophecy.

Before we proceed to notice several extracts from our author, and others who have traveled in the east, respecting the present condition and situation of Petra, or in Hebrew Sela, which signifies a rock, once the magnificent capital of Idumea, we will invite attention to some of the numerous and striking prophecies respecting this city, or the now desolate land of Edom. Thus we shall more clearly see that the present condition of the country as given by modern travelers is a remarkable attestation of the accuracy of the fulfilment of numerous prophecies respecting it :

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"My sword shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment. From generation to generation it shall lie waste, none shall pass through it for ever and ever. But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness. They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom; but none shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing. And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof; and it shall be a habitation of dragons, and a court for owls. Seek ye out of the book of the Lord and read; no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate; for my mouth it hath commanded, and his Spirit it hath gathered them. And he hath cast the lot for them, and his hand hath divided it unto them by line; they shall possess it for ever, from generation to generation shall they dwell therein," Isa. xxxiv, 5, 10-17. "I have sworn by myself, saith the Lord, that Bozrah" (the strong and fortified city) "shall become a desolation, a reproach, a waste, and a curse; and all the cities thereof shall be perpetual wastes. Lo, I will make thee small among the heathen, and despised among men. Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill: though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord. Also Edom shall be a desolation; every one that goeth by shall be astonished, and shall hiss at all the plagues thereof. As in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the neighboring cities thereof, saith the Lord, no man shall abide there, neither shall a son of man dwell in it," Jer. xlix, 13–18. "Thus saith the Lord God, I will stretch out mine hand upon Edom, and I will cut off man and beast from it, and I will make it desolate from Teman." "I laid the mountains of Esau and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wil. derness. Whereas Edom saith, we are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places: thus saith the Lord of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness," Mal. i, 3, 4.

With what surprising accuracy have the above prophecies been fulfilled! How utterly desolate is the entire land of Idumea! "Edom shall be a desolation." Volney, though an infidel, has undesignedly furnished striking proof of the fulfilment of numerous prophecies re specting this land. He says, "This country has not been visited by any traveler, but it merits such attention; for, from the report of the Arabs of Bakir, and the inhabitants of Gaza, who frequently go to

Maan and Karak, on the road of the pilgrims, there are to the southeast of the lake Asphaltites, (Dead Sea,) within three days' journey, upward of thirty ruined towns absolutely deserted. The Arabs, in general, avoid them on account of the enormous scorpions with which they swarm. We cannot be surprised at these traces of ancient population, when we recollect that this was the country of the Nabotheans, the most powerful of the Arabs, and of the Idumeans, who, at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, were almost as numerous as the Jews. Besides the advantages of being under a tolerably good government, these districts enjoyed a considerable share of the commerce of Arabia and India, which increased their industry and population. We know that, as far back as the time of Solomon, the cities of Astioum, Gaber, (Esion Gaber,) and Ailah, (Eloth,) were highly frequented marts. The Idumeans, from whom the Jews only took their ports at intervals, must have found in them a great source of wealth and population." See Volney's Travels, vol. ii, p. 344, &c.

Keith, in commenting on the above extract, says: "Evidence which must have been undesigned, which cannot be suspected of partiality, and which no illustration can strengthen, and no ingenuity pervert, is thus horne to the truth of the most wonderful prophecies. That the Idumeans were a populous and powerful nation, at a long time after the delivery of the prophecies; that they possessed a tolerably good government, even in the estimation of Volney; that Idumea contained many cities; that these cities are absolutely deserted, and that their ruins swarm with scorpions; that it was a commercial nation, and possessed highly frequented marts; that it forms a shorter route than the ordinary one to India; and yet that it had not been visited by any traveler, are facts stated or proved by Volney."

We might quote from other travelers were it necessary. Chardin, Shaw, Burckhardt, Seetzen, Morier, Laborde, and others, in their de scriptions of the present state of Idumea, have clearly demonstrated the accurate fulfilment of prophecies concerning it. But we will present the reader with one or two extracts touching this point from our author. After having entered the land cursed by the Almighty, he says, "I had now crossed the borders of Edom. Standing near the shore of the Elanitic branch of the Red Sea, the doomed and accursed land lay before me, the theatre of awful visitations and of more awful fulfilment; given to Esau as being of the fatness of the earth, but now a barren waste, a picture of death, an eternal monument of the wrath of an offended God, and a fearful witness to the truth of the words spoken by his prophets. For my sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment.' From generation to generation it shall lie

waste,' &c.

"I read in the sacred book prophecy upon prophecy, and curse upon curse, against the land on which I stood. I was about to journey through this land, and to see with my own eyes whether the Almighty had stayed his uplifted arm, or whether his sword had indeed come down upon Idumea, and the people of his curse, to judgment.' I have before referred to Keith on the Prophecies, where, in illustrating the fulfilment of the predictions against Idumea, none shall pass through it for ever and ever;' after referring to a singular fact, that

the great caravan routes existing in the days of David and Solomon, and under the Roman empire, are now completely broken up, and that the great hadzi routes to Mecca from Damascus and Cairo lie along the borders of Idumea, barely touching and not passing through it, he proves by abundant references that to this day no traveler has ever passed through the land.'

"The Bedouins, who roam over the land of Idumea, have been described by travelers as the worst of their race. The Arabs about Akaba,' says Pococke, are a very bad people and notorious robbers, and are at war with all the others.' Mr. Joliffe alludes to it as one of the wildest and most dangerous divisions of Arabia; and Burck. hardt says, that for the first time he had ever felt fear during his travels in the desert, and his route was the most dangerous he had ever traveled that he had nothing with him that could attract the notice or excite the cupidity of the Bedouins,' and was even stripped of some rags that covered his wounded ankles. Messrs. Legh and Banks, and captains Irby and Mangles, were told that the Arabs of Wady Moussa, the tribe that formed my escort, were a most savage and treacherous race, and that they would use their Franks' blood for a medicine; and they learned on the spot that upward of thirty pil. grims from Barbary had been murdered at Petra the preceding year by the men of Wady Moussa;' and they speak of the opposition and obstruction from the Bedouins as resembling the case of the Israelites under Moses when Edom refused to give them passage through his country. None of these had passed through it; and unless the two Englishmen and Italian before referred to succeeded in their attempt, when I pitched my tent on the borders of Edom, no traveler had ever done so. The ignorance and mystery that hung over it, added to the interest with which I looked to the land of barrenness and desolation stretched out before me; and I would have regarded all the difficulties and dangers of the road merely as materials for a not unpleasant excitement, if I had only felt a confidence in my physical strength to carry me through." Again: says he, "On the left were the mountains of Judea, and on the right those of Seir, the portion given to Esau as an inheritance; and among them, buried from the eyes of strangers, the approach to it known only to the wandering Bedouins, *was the ancient capital of his kingdom, the excavated city of Petra, the cursed and blighted Edom, of the Edomites. The land of Idumea day before me, in barrenness and desolation; no trees grew in the valley, and no verdure on the mountain tops. All was bare, dreary, and desolate." The farther descriptions which the author gives of this doomed and blighted land show the truth of the prophecies of God's word concerning it.

But it is to Petra we wish more particularly to direct the reader's attention. The author seems to have had this ancient capital particularly in view in visiting Idumea. It seems also to have been the main object of Laborde, from whose writings we shall make some extracts, to visit this ancient city. In the utter desolation of this once magnificent capital, as given by the author, we shall see too the fullest demonstration of the truth of the sacred prophecies.

The author thus notices the situation of the city, his manner of entrance, &c." 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, en. compassed on all sides by rugged mountains five or six hundred feet in height. The whole of this area is now a waste of ruins, dwellinghouses, 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 labor 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.

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Nothing can be finer than the immense rocky rampart which incloses the city. Strong, firm, and immovable 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 at 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 a large and beautiful temple, I was disappointed." Vol. ii, pp. 51, 52.

This disappointment arose from the fact that the place of entrance was not such as had been described by other travelers. He was fre. quently told by his guide that there was no other place of entrance, which he afterward found to be untrue, as he sought for and found it. He was also disappointed in being permitted to enter the city without meeting with opposition from the wandering Arabs. Burckhardt was accosted by a large company of Bedouins, upon his entry, who suffered him to remain but a very short time. Messrs. Legh, Banks, Irby, and Mangles were opposed by hundreds of Bedouins, who absolutely declared that they should not enter their territory, nor drink of their waters," and "that they would shoot them like dogs if they attempted it." Our author expected to have met with something of the like opposition, but he says, "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 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, strag. gling 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."

The entrance to the city is thus described by Laborde :-

"We arrived from the south, and ascended by the ravine, which presents itself near the border or margin below. By advancing a little in that direction, we commanded a view of the whole city, covered with ruins, and of its superb inclosure of rocks, pierced with myriads of tombs, which form a series of wondrous ornaments all round. Astonished by these countless excavations, I dismounted from my dromedary, and sketched a tomb, which seemed to me to combine in itself two characters, each of which may be found separately in those by which it is surrounded, the upper part being in the Syriaco-Egyptian style, the lower part decorated in the Græco-Roman fashion.To the right of this monument, and at a short distance from it, are found two tombs entirely detached from the rock of which they originally formed a part. Behind that which terminates in a point there is a sculptured stone in the form of a fan, and which appears, though at some distance, to be an ornament belonging to the first, for I could discover no other to which it could appertain. These monuments are more particularly connected with the mode of excavation in use among the Indians.

"Still proceeding along the bottom of the ravine toward the north, we observed on the left an uninterrupted line of elevated rocks, the numerous excavations in which, wrought in a variety of styles, continued at every step to excite our astonishment. On quitting the ravine, which turns on the left into the mountain, we ascended by a gentle acclivity; when we arrived at the top, we discovered another series of magnificent monuments, but, at the same time, in a condition nearly resembling the mass of ruins which cover the ground beneath." Journey through Arabia Petræa, pp. 152-155.

Our author thus describes this ravine leading to Petra, which he found after he had entered the city and which he explored to some extent: "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, illuminating 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."

This temple, one of the most remarkable objects relating to antiquity, and which is called the Khasne, or "Treasury of Pharaoh," is thus described:*