WADIS BORDERING ON THE 'ARABAH. 283 Mount Hor, which was distinctly in sight during the afternoon. The summits of Jebel esh-Shírah, or Mount Seir, which run parallel to the Wádí Arabah, through almost the whole of its range, were visible in front and to our right and left, from the time that we began to notice Mount Hor. The range of Seir, when looked upon from the west, appears very much to the eye of an equable height. Tuesday, 7th March.-We set in motion this morning at seven o'clock. Our course throughout the whole day was E. by N. E., exactly in the direction of Mount Hor, which we found an excellent landmark. Our Arabs seemed more reconciled to one another than hitherto; and they all appeared to be under the dread of some common, but unseen enemy. It was evident to us from their anxieties, that they had passed the boundaries of their own proper range, and that they did not consider themselves on good terms with their neighbours of the Arabah, into whose territories they had entered. They took care to impress us with a high idea of their powers of flight, if not of fight. Having started a hare of full growth, two of them, one of whom was on foot, and the other mounted upon a camel, set off in its pursuit. The rider first gave chase; and then, on his pulling up, the footman, who had been endeavouring to turn the hare by getting upon it by a cross line, followed it with such amazing speed as we had never seen exhibited before by any specimen of the homo sapiens. He gained fast upon it; and it stopped for shelter in a small bush. He was at it in a moment, and nearly chopped off its head with his sword. He brought it to us in triumph; but, unlike the Tawarahs in similar circumstances, he took precious good care not to offer it to us as a present. After an hour's march, we came upon one old caravan road, marked by ten or twelve camel tracks, running along the heights by which the Wádí Arabah is bounded on the west. It attracted our particular attention, and led to minute examination. It was cut through by the rains in many places, and large portions of the banks over which it had formerly passed had fallen down. Fragment after fragment of it, however, was visible on both sides of us. We concluded that it must have been connected with Elath (Ailah) or Ezion-gaber in ancient times, and that it is a proof that Kafilahs of merchandise proceeding from the eastern branch of the Red Sea to Gaza, or the south of Judah, did not always keep in the low valley of the Arabah. We were about two hours in getting out of what might be called the slopes of the Arabah. On completing the descent, we found a small Wádí furrowing the Arabah on the west, called the Ghabíyah. We were unable, from our ocular inspection of it, to say whether its water flows to the north or south, though the general aspect of the country obviously shows that it must go to the north. We were exactly seven hours in crossing the Arabah. Cutting it diagonally, we did not find it so level on its surface as we expected; and, generally speaking, it is as barren as the desert itself. It has commonly a very hard stony bottom. Patches of softer material, but of sand with very little soil in it, here and there occur, especially where there are depressions in its surface. Many boulders and rounded stones, of red and white granite, porphyry, basalt, sandstone, and lime, such as are found in beds of rivers running between mountains of different formations, are in many parts scattered over its surface. On the eastern sides there are beds of alluvial gravel torn up by torrents. The dry bed of one of these torrents, with steep banks, called Wádí el-Gharandel, we found about half a mile in breadth. That this was the bed of a river we had no doubt; and we were quite willing to believe that it must be the bed of the ancient Jordan, CROSSING THE 'ARABAH-ITS GEOLOGICAL FORMATION. 285 through which its rolling floods passed on to the Red Sea before the destruction of the cities of the plain. The very name which it bears, however, when viewed in connexion with its real source, puts an end to this interesting speculation. It is called the Wádí Gharandel, (Arindela,) because it is the continuation of a large Wádí and winter torrent coming down first in a north-west direction from the heights of Mount Seir, and then, on arriving at the level of the Arabah, not passing to the south-west to the Red Sea, but to the north-east to the Dead Sea. It is considerably to the south of the part where it enters the great plain that the drainage of the Arabah goes to the Red Sea. Some may think that these facts, whatever they may determine as to the Wádí Gharandel as it now exists, do not conclusively prove that the Jordan may not have passed through the Arabah to the Red Sea before the overwhelming of Sodom, Gomorrah, and the other cities of the plain. On the occasion of this catastrophe, they may say, a great alteration may have taken place in the level of the valley throughout its whole extent. An elevation may have occurred in its middle, and a depression in its northern parts. The extent of this elevation and depression, necessary to suit the facts of the case, it is to be observed in reply, is such as far to transcend the Scripture narrative. The Dead Sea has been found by the actual measurements of Lieut. Symonds of the Royal Engineers, to be 1312.2 feet, and the lake of Tiberias 328.98 feet, below the level of the Mediterranean. If all this depression took place with the raising of the Wádí Arabah above the level of the ocean, when the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire out of heaven,2 then must God have not only "overthrown those cities and all the plain, (in which they were,) and all the 1 See Lieut. Symonds' Measurements, in the Relievo Map of Pales tine, published by Dobbs and Bailey, inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground," as the sure word of his testimony informs us; but, if we may judge from any thing we know of the mighty power of an earthquake of the required magnitude, it must, if it took place, have convulsed to their overthrow the whole lands of Canaan, Moab, Ammon, Edom, and the Desert, to the destruction of all their inhabitants. No such convulsion took place. Lot, casting his eyes on Zoar, quite proximate to Sodom, said, "This city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one: oh, let me escape thither, (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live."2 Into this city he was permitted to flee, and was safe. Abraham, living in the plains of Mamre, near Hebron, had practical cognizance of the execution of the threatened vengeance of God on the cities of the plain, only by his getting up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the Lord, and looking toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and beholding the smoke of the country going up like the smoke of a furnace.3 Striking as must have been the phenomena which occurred during the storms of fire and brimstone, and the eruptions and submergence which may have been their cause or accompaniments, they certainly fall short of the awful demands of the theory to which I refer. The fact undoubtedly is, that the Wádí Arabah and its continuation, the valley of the Jordan, whatever partial changes they may have undergone in our own Adamic era, together form perhaps the most wonderful crevasse in the whole world-a fissure made by volcanic and basaltic eruptions, long before the race of man appeared on the globe. When we got across the Wádí Arabah, the breadth of which in the straight line we estimated at about ten or eleven miles, we came upon a low ridge jutting into it, as 1 Gen. xix. 25. * Gen. xix. 20. 3 Gen. xix. 28. ENCAMPMENT ON THE BORDERS OF EDOM. 287 We partly rounded an outpost from the Idumean range. and partly surmounted this ridge, and pitched our tent in the Wádí which leads up, by a low pass, to the flanks of Mount Hor, and alongside of them to Petra, the wonderful and mysterious SELAH,1 or city of the rock, which we had come so far through the great and terrible wilderness to inspect. As soon as we were able, we took out our bibles, and read the twentieth chapter of Numbers. This portion of the Divine word carried us back, with melancholy interest, to the times when Israel vainly demanded of his brother Esau a way through his territory, without trespass, or injury, or unrequited favour; and when the consecrated brother of Moses died upon the top of that very mount, the summits of which the sun, sinking in the western wastes, in the ocean of desolation over which we had passed, was still gilding with subdued radiance. |