Mare Rubrum, or Red Sea. By the Hebrews it was called Yam Suph, usually translated the Weedy Sea; but since Mr. BRUCE, who explored its whole extent, declared that he never saw a weed in it, the appellation has been referred to the coral trees with which it abounds. The appearance of this term in scripture, before the completion of the Exodus, has probably caused a difficulty in tracing its etymology; because although suph signifies a weed, yet, according to some celebrated Hebrew lexicographers, it also means to finish, to consume, to put an end to, Gen. xix. 15, 17. Psl. lxxiii. 19. Dan. ii. 44. to accomplish or fulfil, Dan. iv. 33. to perish, 1 Sam. xxvi. 10. to destroy, to sweep away, Gen. xviii. 23, 24. Prov. xiii. 23. And therefore Yam Suph may be as correctly rendered the Sea of Destruction as the Weedy Sea. The latter designation is, indeed, very obscurely accounted for; whereas that memorable event, which its name, whatever it may signify, will never cease to bring to recollection-the annihilation of the mighty army of Pharoah, points it out pre-eminently as the Seu of Destruction. The objection too against this explication,its bearing the name apparently before the circumstance occurred, becomes of little weight when it is recollected that in the revision of the sacred books by some authorized individual in later times, (probably Ezra) such alterations were made in the names of places, as circumstances had rendered necessary: thus, for instance, mention is made of Dan, Gen. xiv. 14. though the place did not bear that name until some centuries after. Judges xviii. 29. But there is no necessity for going thus far to account for the use of this term in Exod. xiii. 18: Moses wrote the Exodus and subsequent part of his history, whilst in the wilderness; and, in so doing, used such names as he and his people had affixed to the various places, where any thing remarkable had occurred, to preserve the remembrance of the fact. The narrative of the journeys of the Israelites, Numb. xxxiii. sufficiently attests this; and it is not easy to assign any

reason for a deviation on this memorable occasion. The name Yam Suph, indicating perhaps the accomplishment of Israel's deliverance, and the fulfilment of prophecies and promises, as well as the destruction which swept away their foes, was calcu lated to awaken every succeeding generation to the recollection of the noble works that God has done in the old time before them. That it did produce such effects, the Jewish history amply proves: it was a memorial of a most signal interposition of Divine providence in their behalf, and a pledge of his power, at all times, to redeem his chosen.

Mr. BRUCE, who appears to have identified that part of the western coast of the Red Sea at which the Israelites began to attempt the passage over to the opposite shore, after minutely describing it, thus introduces his opinion concerning this stupendous miracle: "It was proposed to Mr.. Niebuhr, when in Egypt, to inquire upon the spot, whether there were not some ridges of rocks, where the water was shallow, so that an army, at particular times, might pass over ? Secondly, whether the Etesian winds, which blow strongly all the sum mer from the north-west, could not blow so strongly against the sea, as to keep it back on a heap, so that the Israelites might have passed without a miracle 2 A copy of these queries was left for me to join my inquiries likewise."

"But I must confess, however learned the gentlemen were who proposed these doubts, I did not think they merited any attention. This passage, we are all told in. scripture, was a

* According to this celebrated traveller, Pihahiroth, near to which the Israelites encamped, means the mouth of the valley of Badeah, opening into a narrow tract of country, forming part of the western coast of the Red Sea. The passage of Moses with his people seems to be cominemorated in the name yet borne by the north cape of the bay opposite to Pihahiroth, Ras Musa, the Cape of Moses. About this part of the coast, where from many reasons, he supposes the Israelites effected their passage, the space across je rather less than four leagues, having fourteen fathoms of water in the channel. and about nine in the sides, and very good anchorage every where. The opposite coast is low and sandy, and a very easy landing place.

miraculous one: if so, we have nothing to do with natural causes. If we do not believe Moses, we need not believe the transaction at all, seeing that from his authority alone we derive it. If we believe in God, that he made the sea, we must believe that he could divide it when he sees proper reason; and of that he must be the only judge. It is no greater miracle to divide the Red Sea, than to divide the river Jordan.

"If the Etesian wind, blowing from the north-west in summer, could heap up the sea as a wall, on the right or to the south, fifty feet high; still the difficulty would remain, of building the wall on the left hand, or to the north. Besides, water standing in that position for a day, must have lost the nature of fluid. Whence came that cohesion of particles that hindered that wall to escape at the sides? This is as great a miracle as that of Moses. If the Etesian winds had done this once, they must have repeated it many a time before and since from the same cause. Yet Diodorus Siculus says the Troglodytes, the indigenous inhabitants of that very spot, had a tradition from father to son, from the remotest ages, that once a division of the sea did happen there, and that after leaving its bottom sometime dry, the sea again came back, and covered it with great fury. The words of this author are of the most remarkable kind. We cannot think this heathen is writing in favour of revelation. He knew not Moses, nor says a word about Pharaoh and his host, but records the miracle of the division of the water in words nearly as strong as those of Moses, from the months of unbiassed, undesigning pagans.

"Were all these difficulties surmounted, what could we do with the pillar of fire? The answer is, we should not believe it. Why then believe the passage at all? We have no anthority for the one but what is for the other. contrary to the ordinary nature of things, and it must be a fable."-Travels, vol. ii.

It is altogether if not a miracle,

I.

"A land of deserts and of pits, a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt."-Jerem. ii. 6.

"The vast Desert of Arabia, reaching from the eastern side of the Red Sea to the confines of the land of Canaan, in which the children of Israel sojourned after their departure from Egypt, is in the sacred writings particularly called THE DESERT; very numerous are the allusions made to it, and to the divine protection and support, which were extended to them during their migration. Moses, when recapitulating their various deliverances, terms this desert a desert land and waste howling wilderness, Deut. xxxii. 10. and that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, scorpions, and drought, where there was no water. Deut. viii. 15. The prophet Hosea describes it as a land of great drought. xiii. 5. But the most minute description is that in Jer. ii. 6.—a land of deserts and of pits, a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt. These characteristics of the desert, particularly the want of water, will account for the repeated murmurings of the Israelites both for food and water, (especially the latter) and the extremity of their sufferings is thus concisely, but most emphatically, pourtrayed by the psalmist, cvii. 5. Hungry and thirsty, THEIR SOUL FAINTED in them."-Rev. T. H. HORNE's Introd. vol. iii. part 1. b. 2.

M. G. BELZONI, when on his journey from the ruins of Berenice to the Nile, passed through a desert, of which he gives the following minute and terrific description:

"It is difficult to form a correct idea of a desert without having been in one; it is an endless plain of sand and stones; sometimes intermixed with mountains of all sizes and heights,

without roads or shelter,—without any sort of produce for food. The few scattered trees and shrubs of thorns, that only ap pear when the rainy season leaves some moisture, barely serve to feed wild animals, and a few birds. Every thing is left to nature; the wandering inhabitants do not care to cultivate even these few plants, and when there is no more of them in one place, they go to another. When the trees become old, and lose their vegetation in such climates as these, the sun, which constantly beams upon them, burns and reduces them to ashes. I have seen many of them entirely burnt. The other smaller plants have no sooner risen out of the earth than they are dried up, and all take the colour of straw, with the exception of the plant haruck; this falls off before it is dry. Speaking in general of a desert, there are few springs of water, some of them at the distance of four, six, and eight days' journey from one another, and not all of sweet water; on the contrary, it is generally salt or bitter, so that if the thirsty traveller drinks of it, it increases his thirst, and he suffers more than before; but when the dreadful calamity happens that the next well, which is so anxiously sought for, is found dry, the misery of such a situation cannot be well described. The camels, which afford the only means of escape, are so thirsty that they cannot proceed to another well; and if the travellers kill them to extract the little liquid which remains in their stomachs, they themselves cannot advance any farther. The situation must be dreadful, and admits of no resource. I must not omit what I have been told happens in such cases.

"Many perish victims of the most horrible thirst. It is then that the value of a cup of water is really felt. He that has a zenzabia of it is the richest of all. In such a case there is no distinction; if the master has none, the servant will not give it to him, for very few are the instances where a man will voluntarily lose his life to save that of another, particularly