TESTIMONY OF AN EYEWITNESS.

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ruins, and stopping for a moment to talk with some of the Arabs, I saw on the left, in the side of a mountain, an open door like those of the tombs in Egypt-a simple orifice, without any ornament or sculpture. A woman was coming out with a child in her arms, a palpable indication that here, too, the abodes of the dead were used as habitations by the living. In Paul's disabled state I could ask no questions, and I did not stop to explore.

I cannot leave this interesting region without again expressing my regret at being able to add so little to the stock of useful knowledge. I can only testify to the existence of the ruins of cities which have been known only in the books of historians, and I can bear witness to the desolation that reigns in Edom. I can do more, not with the spirit of scoffing at prophecy, but of one who, in the strong evidence of the fulfilment of predictions uttered by the voice of inspiration, has seen and felt the evidences of the sure foundation of the Christian faith; and having regard to what I have already said in reference to the interpretation of the prophecy, "None shall pass through it for ever and ever," I can say that I have passed through the land of Idumea. My route was not open to the objection made to that of Burckhardt, the traveller who came nearest to passing through the land; for he entered from Damascus, on the east side of the Dead Sea, and struck the borders of Edom at such a point that literally he cannot be said to have passed through it. If the reader will look at the map ac

companying these pages, he will see Burckhardt's route; and he will also see that mine is not open to the critical objections made to his; and that, beyond all peradventure, I did pass directly through the land of Idumea lengthwise, and crossing its northern and southern border; and, unless the two Englishmen and Italian before referred to passed on this same route, I am the only person, except the wandering Arabs, who ever did pass through the doomed and forbidden Edom, beholding with his own eyes the fearful fulfilment of the terrible denunciations of an offended God. And, though I did pass through and yet was not cut off, God forbid that I should count the prophecy a lie: no ; even though I had been a confirmed skeptic, I have seen enough, in wandering with the Bible in my hand in that unpeopled desert, to tear up the very foundations of unbelief, and scatter its fragments to the winds. In my judgment, the words of the prophet are abundantly fulfilled in the destruction and desolation of the ancient Edom, and the complete and eternal breaking up of a great public highway; and it is neither necessary nor useful to extend the denunciation against a passing trav. eller.*

Keith's celebrated treatise on the Prophecies has passed through fourteen editions, differing in some few particulars. In the sixth edition he says that Sir Frederick Henniker, in his notes dated from Mount Sinai, states that Seetzen, on a vessel of paper pasted against the wall, notifies his having penetrated the country in a direct line between the Dead Sea and Mount Sinai (through Idumea), a route never before accomplished. In a note to the sams

Approach to Hebron.-A Sick Governor.-A Prescription at Random.-Hospitality of the Jews.-Finale with the Bedouins -A Storm.-A Calm after the Storm.-Venality of the Arabs. -Hebron.-A Coptic Christian.-Story of the Rabbi.-Professional Employment.

I HAD followed the wandering path of the chil dren of Israel, from the land of Egypt and the house of bondage, to the borders of the Promised Land; had tracked them in their miraculous passage across the Red Sea to the mountains of Si

edition, the learned divine says, "Not even the cases of two individuals, Seetzen and Burckhardt, can be stated as at all opposed to the literal interpretation of the prophecies. Seetzen did indeed pass through Idumea, and Burckhardt traversed a considerable part of it; but the former met his death not long after the completion of his journey through Idumea (he died at Akaba, supposed to have been poisoned); the latter never recovered from the effects of the hardships and privations which he suffered there; and without even commencing the exclusive design which he had in view, viz., to explore the interior of Africa, to which all his journeyings in Asia were merely intended as preparatory, he died at Cairo. Neither of them lived to return to Europe. I will cut off from Mount Seir him that passeth out and him that returneth:" In the edition which I saw on the Nile, and which first turned my attention to the route through Idumea, I have no recollection of having seen any reference to Seetzen. It may have been there, however,. without my particularly noticing it; as, when I read it, I had but lit»tle expectation of being able myself to undertake the route..

nai, through" the great and terrible wilderness that leadeth to Kadesh Barnea ;" and among the stony mountains through which I was now journeying must have been the Kadesh, in the wilderness of Paran, from which Moses sent the ten chosen men to spy out the land of Canaan, who went "unto the brook of Esheol, and cut down from thence a branch with one eluster of grapes, and bare it between two upon a staff; and though they brought of the pomegranates and figs, and said that surely the land flowed with milk and honey, and these were the fruits thereof; yet brought up such an evil report of the land, that it ate up the inhabitants thereof; and of the sons of Anak, the giants that dwelt therein, that the hearts of the Israelites sank within them; they murmured against Moses; and for their murmurings they were sent back into the wilderness; and their carcasses, from twenty years old and upward, were doomed to fall in the wilderness, and the children of the murmurers to wander forty years before they should enter the Land of Promise." I followed in the track of the spies; and, though I saw not the Vale of Eshcol with its grapes and pomegranates, neither did I see the sons of Anak, the giants which dwelt in the land. Indeed, the men of Anak could not have made me turn back from the Land of Promise. I was so heartily tired of the desert and my Bedouin companions, that I would have thrown myself into the

* Numbers xiii., 23.

APPROACH TO HEBRON.

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arms of the giants themselves for relief. And though the mountains were as yet stony and barren, they were so green and beautiful by comparison with the desert I had left, that the conviction even of much greater dangers than I had yet encountered could hardly have driven me back. The Bedouins and the Fellahs about Hebron are regarded as the worst, most turbulent, and desperate Arabs under the government of the pacha; but as I met little parties of them coming out towards the frontier, they looked, if such a character can be conceived of Arabs, like quiet, respectable, orderly citizens, when compared with my wild protectors; and they greeted us kindly and cordially as we passed them, and seemed to welcome us once more to the abodes of men.

As we approached Hebron the sheik became more and more civil and obsequious; and before we came in sight of the city, he seemed to have some misgivings about entering it, and asked me to secure protection from the governor for that night for himself and men, which I did not hesitate to promise. I was glad to be approaching again a place under the established government of the pacha, where, capricious and despotic as was the exercise of power, I was sure of protection against the exactions of my Bedouins; and the reader may judge of the different degrees of security existing in these regions, from being told that I looked to the protection of a Turk as a guarantee against the rapacity of an Arab. After clambering over