- 39-
- The other objections are weak.
** According to Badeker, the whole journey from Jebel Usdum to Petra occupies only
from 18 to 20 hours; and if from this we subtract about four and a half hours to the chalk
cliffs which bound "the valley," we have little more than thirteen hours to travel, of
which only two or three could really be called difficult. Besides, the Arabah south of the
chalk cliffs bears marks of having been, when Ezion Geber stood, the road of
communication from the Gulf of Akabah into Jewish territory.
*** Sela was less than forty miles from the Dead Sea.
It must have been a marvelous sight which met the Jewish host as they descended from
the east into that surpassingly grand defile which opens into the so-called Wady Musa -
the "Valley of Moses "* - the site of the ancient, Sela, "rock " - better known by its later
name of Petra. The "cleft," or Sik, which formed the only access to it, passes between
perpendicular rocks of red sandstone, rising to a height of from 100 to 300 feet.
- For the origin of the name, and indeed for a detailed account of Petra, we must refer to
the special literature on the subject, only specially naming Badeker's Handbook, and the
late Dean Stanley's Sinai and Palestine. Upon the description of the latter (pp. 86-90) our
brief account is based. Comp. also Palmer, Desert of the Exodus, vol. Ii. chap. viii.
It follows the winding course of a torrent which rises in the mountains half an hour
thence, at a spot said to be that where the rod of Moses had brought the water from the
smitten rock. For an hour and a half we pass through this gorge, between rocky walls that
"overlap and crumble and crack," their intervening heights "throughout almost as narrow
as the narrowest part of the defile of Pfeffers." At the entrance we pass under an arch that
spans the chasm. Our progress is along what had once been a paved way, where the
torrent had been "diverted," "along troughs in the rocks, into a water-conduit for the city."
Festoons of the caper-plant and wild ivy and oleanders fringe the road, which winds like
a river, affording at every turn the surprise of new views. The cliffs are red - in the
sunshine, scarlet; in the shadow, black. Then through a narrow opening, where the rocks
here overarch, we find ourselves suddenly at a turn of the road in face of a temple, with
its pale pink pillars, all hewn into the rock. For all here is rock - rock graves, streets of
rock, rock dwellings, rock temples, rock monuments; gorgeous rocks, dull crimson
streaked with purple, over which seem to flow ribbons of yellow and blue. Again the road
narrows through the streets of tombs, till it passes into the bottom of the rock-enclosed
hollow or valley, with its branching valleys of rocks. This is the site of Petra now a
desolation, but once a city of splendor and wealth, the central station for the commerce
from India.
(^)