table-plain, called Herîmet Haggag, between the Wâdy Sayal and the Wâdy-el-'Ain; the rock which stands at the end of this plain has more in proportion than any other spot I have seen, and there are some in the sandstone labyrinths near it. Seventhly, a few on the staircase leading up to the Deir at Petra, and, apparently, on the "isolated column" in the plain. (Some of our fellow-travellers also found them in a tomb near the Theatre.) Eighthly, on the broken columns of a ruin at or near the ancient Malatha, immediately before entering the hills of Judea.

2. This enumeration will show how widely spread they are; it will also, I think, show that in some instances at least they have been cut by pilgrims or travellers, visiting particular, and probably, sacred localities. I allude to those of the Lejâ, the Deir at Petra, and especially Serbâl. In all these places there is no thoroughfare, and therefore the places themselves must have been the object of the writers. What could have been their purpose in the Lejâ it is difficult to say, for they go beyond the traditional Rock of Moses, and yet they fall far short of the summit of St. Catherine; nor have they any connection with the traditional scenes of the giving of the Law, Gebel Mousa being entirely without them. At Petra their object is evidently the Deir. At Serbâl their object must have been something at the top of the mountain itself. [It will be seen that I have not visited the "Gebel Mokatteb," which is an isolated mountain on the shore of the Red Sea, hitherto described only by the Comte d'Amtraigues. See Forster's "Voice of Israel,” p. 84.] It should also be observed, that they are nearly, though not quite, as numerous on the east as on the west of the peninsula. Those in the south lay out of my route.

3. Their situation and appearance is such as in hardly any case requires more than the casual work of passing travellers. Most of them are on sandstone, those of Wâdy Mokatteb and Herîmet Haggag, and Petra, of course very susceptible of inscriptions. Those which are on granite are very rudely and slightly scratched. At Herîmet Haggag one of us scooped out a horse, more complete than any of these sculptured animals, in ten minutes. Again, none that I saw, unless it might be a very doubtful one at Petra, required ladders or machinery of any kind. Most of them could be written by any one, who, having bare legs and feet as all Arabs have, could take firm hold of the ledges, or by any active man even with shoes. I think there are none that could not have been written by one man climbing on another's shoulder. Amongst the highest in the Wâdy Mokatteb are single Greek names.

4. Their numbers seem to me to have been greatly exaggerated. I had expected in the Wâdy Mokatteb to see both sides of a deep defile covered with thousands. Such is not the case by any means. The Wâdy Mokatteb is a large open valley, almost a plain, with no con

tinuous wall of rock on either side, but masses of rock receding and advancing; and it is only or chiefly on these advancing masses, that the inscriptions straggle, not by thousands, but at most by hundreds or fifties. So, on Serbâl, I think we could hardly have overlooked any; but we saw no more than three, though it is difficult to reconcile this with the statement of Burckhardt, that he had there seen many inscriptions. They are much less numerous than the scribblings of the names of Western travellers on the monuments in the Valley of the Nile since the beginning of this century.

5. So far as the drawings of animals by which they are usually accompanied, indicate the intention of the inscriptions themselves, it is difficult to conceive that that intention could have been serious or solemn. The animals are very rudely drawn; they are of all kinds; asses, horses, dogs, but, above all, ibexes; and these last, in forms so ridiculous, that, making every allowance for the rudeness of the sculpture, it is impossible to invest them with any serious signification. The ludicrous exaggeration of the horns of the ibex was almost universal; and no animal occurred so frequently. Sometimes they are butting other animals. Sometimes they, as well as asses and horses, occur disconnected with inscriptions.

6. As regards their antiquity, I observed the following data. There was great difference of age, both in the pictures and letters, as indicated by the difference of colour; the oldest, of course, being those which approached most nearly to the colour of the rock. But, first, I found none on fallen rocks inverted, and, though I doubt not that there may be such, the sandstone crumbles so rapidly that this is no proof of age. A famous Greek inscription at Petra fell in 1846. Secondly, they are intermixed, though not in great numbers, with Greek and Arabic, and in one or two instances Latin inscriptions, these in some cases bearing the same appearance of colour, wear and tear, as the Sinaitic. Thirdly, these Greek inscriptions, which alone I could read, were chiefly the names of the writers. The only Latin inscription which I remember was in the sandstone rocks near Herîmet Haggag,-PERTUS. Fourthly, Crosses of all kinds, chiefly + and, were very numerous and conspicuous, standing usually at the beginning of the inscriptions, and (what is important) occurring also and in the same position before those written in Greek and Arabic; often nothing but the cross, sometimes the cross with Alpha and Omega. [These last were in the same place where I noticed the Latin inscription, (thus A+,) of the same colour as the contiguous Sinaitic characters.] From having previously seen that Forster and Tuch (the last German writer on the subject) had united in the conclusion that the hypothesis of their being Christian inscriptions was groundless, and that the alleged appearance of crosses was a mistake, I was the more surprised to find them in such numbers, and of such a character;

and however else they may be explained, I can hardly imagine a doubt that they are the work, for the most part, of Christians, whether travellers or pilgrims. They are in this case curious, and if their object could be ascertained, would throw great light on the traditions of the Peninsula; but it cannot be reconciled with the theory of their being the work of Israelites. If the date of the columns at Malatha could be ascertained, or of the temple and tomb at Petra where they occur, the question would be settled. The two latter, I presume, cannot be older than the Roman dominion of Arabia.

[I may here add the curious fact, that Laborde describes a Latin inscription in a certain tomb at Petra as "an inscription in three lines, carved on a tablet, and of importance, as giving the name of the officer, Quintus Praetextus Florentinus, who died at Petra while he was governor of this part of Arabia. It appears to be of the time of Adrian or Antoninus Pius." (Laborde's "Sinai and Petra," Eng. Tr., p. 289.) He indicates its position so precisely, that there was no difficulty in identifying it. But no single fact which he thus describes can be found in the inscription, and no single fact mentioned in the inscription is found in his description of it. It was as follows::

One of the Sinaitic inscriptions of Petra is given in the "Zeitschrift der D. Morgenländischen Gesellschaft," ix. 230.]

SINAI.

PART II.

THE JOURNEY FROM CAIRO TO JERUSALEM.

THE following extracts are either from letters, or (when bracketed) from journals, written on the spot or immediately afterwards. Such only are selected as served to convey the successive imagery of the chief stages of the journey, or as contained details not mentioned by previous travellers. My object has been to give the impressions of the moment, in the only way in which they could be given,- as the best illustrations of the more general statements elsewhere founded upon them.

I. Departure from Egypt; Overland Route; First Encampment.-II. The Passage of the Red Sea. (1.) Approach to Suez. (2.) Suez. (3.) Wells of Moses.III. The Desert, and Sandstorm.-IV. Marah; Elim.-V. Second Encampment by the Red Sea; "Wilderness of Sin."

VI. Approach to Mount Serbal; Wâdy Sidri and Wâdy Feirân.-VII. Ascent of Serbål.

VIII. Approach to Gebel Mousa, the traditional Sinai.-IX. Ascent of Gebel Mousa and Râs Sasâfeh.-X. Ascent of St. Catherine.-XI. Ascent of the Gebeled-Deir.

XII. Route from Sinai to the Gulf of 'Akaba. (a.) Tomb of Sheykh Saleh. (b.) Wady Sayal and Wady El 'Ain. HAZEROTH. XIII. Gulf of 'Akaba; Elath.

XIV. The 'Arabah.-XV. Approach to Petra.-XVI. Ascent of Mount Hor. XVII. Petra. KADESH.

XVIII. Approach to Palestine.-XIX. Recollections of the First Day in Palestine. -XX. Hebron. - XXI. Approach to Bethlehem and Jerusalem.-XXII. First View of Bethlehem.-XXIII. First View of Jerusalem.

EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS, ETC.

I.-DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT-OVERLAND ROUTE-FIRST

ENCAMPMENT.

Ir was too hazy to see anything in the distance,—even the Pyramids were but shadows. Soon the green circle of cultivated land receded from view, like the shores as you sail out to sea, and in an hour we were in the Desert ocean. Not, however, a wide circle of sand, but a wild waste of pebbly soil, something like that of the Plaine de Crau (near Marseilles), broken into low hills, and presenting nowhere an even horizon. But the remarkable feature was a broad beaten track, smooth and even, and distinctly marked as any turnpike road in England, only twice the width, and running straight as a railway or Roman road through these desert hills.

It was a striking sight in itself, to see the great track of civilised man in such a region. One of the party said, that the only thing to which it could be compared was the high-road from Petersburgh to Moscow. It was still more striking when you knew what it was, the great thoroughfare of the British empire becoming yearly more important and interesting, as the course which so many friends have travelled, and will travel. Even the Exodus for that day waxed faint before it. And, lastly, it was most instructive, as the only likeness probably which I shall ever see of those ancient roads, carried through the Desert in old times to the seats of the Babylonian and Persian Empires, to which allusion is made in the 40th chapter of Isaiah. In this comparatively level region, it is true, no mountains had to be brought low, nor valleys filled up; but it was literally "a high-way prepared in the wilderness;" and the likeness was only interrupted, not obscured, by the solitary stations and telegraphs which, at intervals of every five miles, broke the perfect desolation. It has hitherto run along our whole course. To-day, between heaps of stones said by one of the dragomans to be the graves of Ibrahim Pasha's soldiers-which, as the heaps extend for miles and miles, with the utmost regularity, needs no remark, except as an instance of the extreme rapidity with which false local traditions spring up. They really are the "stones," the stumbling-blocks 99 1 cast up out of the way, and so left on each side of the road to mark it more distinctly.

1 Isa. xl. 3; lxii. 10.