Fellah of Wadi Musa, CHAPTER XI. FROM THE 'ARABAH TO DHAHARIYAH IN THE SOUTH OF JUDAH. Tuesday, 14th March.-Emerging from what may be called the roots of Mount Seir, and turning our backs on the land of Edom, we began this morning to cut through the Wádí Arabah in a north-west direction, requesting our Arabs to make for the Ain el-Weibah, a fountain in the desert on its borders. We occupied seven hours in crossing the Arabah; and we found that, as farther to the south, it has here entirely the character of the desert, though the acacias and camel-bushes are perhaps more abundant than in the great plateau to the west. The minor Wádís, or furrows of the great Wádí, were called Wádí Hamát, Umm-Kanátir, Dabbat el-Baghalat, and Wádí Jeib. VOL. I. Y Towards the Ain el-Weibah the ground rises a little ; and the position of the place may be accurately spoken of as on the banks of the Arabah. We stopped at the wells till we watered our camels, which did not scruple to drink of the water, though having been lately disturbed by some of the herds or droves which resort to it; it appeared, at the principal source, mere mire and mud. Thetaste is disagreeable, and decidedly brackish. A good deal of gas, disagreeable to the smell, was rising from its surface; but this was probably owing to the accumulations of filth at its margin. There are several springs or quagmires at the place, with very luxuriant vegetation of reeds, rushes, and grasses around them. One of them rises at a sort of stony basin; but it does not proceed from a rock distinctly so called, as we had been led to expect. We heard of no ruins in the neighbourhood. The locality is one which ought to be considered very interesting by the Biblical student, who may be able to acquiesce in the theory of Dr. Robinson, identifying it with KADESH-BARNEA, where the Israelites encamped when they sent out the spies to examine the promised land, and from which they sent to demand a passage through Edom, and which is particularly mentioned in Scripture in connexion with the southern boundary of the land of promise. In the theory to which I now refer, however, we were not able to acquiesce, after we had examined all the passages of holy writ in which Kadesh is mentioned, and compared them with the position of elWeibah and the features of the adjoining country, and with information which we had received at Cairo from the Rev. Mr. Rowlands respecting certain geographical discoveries which he had made in the neighbourhood of Jebel Helál. Some of the grounds of the judgment which we formed on these matters, I shall onwards have an opportunity of stating. Shortly after leaving the wells of el-Weibah, we entered into the large Wádí el-Mirzabal, which we found running 'AIN EL-WEIBAH-WADI EL-MIRZABAH. 339 almost due north. We encamped in it for the night after about a couple of hours' travel. The rocks on both sides of us belonged to the cretaceous system, and they were full of marine remains. The strata were much disturbed, and dipping at all angles, and to all points of the compass. The upper one seemed the hardest, and to be, to a good extent, of argillaceous matter, giving it much the appearance of lithographic limestone. It was much broken and curiously disposed of on the slopes of chalk. We observed the party of Arabs, who had joined us on our leaving Petra, and had crossed the Arabah with us in the course of the day, studiously keeping at a distance from us at night. The occasion of their shyness was a quarrel which they had had with Sheikh Husein, one of our conductors, and which originated in a conversation on the respective merits of the camels of the party, and on a subject which we had understood the Badawín are averse to speak about, the suitableness and serviceableness of the female members of their community.. Sheikh Husein was in fault for introducing this last delicate topic, and for the injudicious manner in which he brought it to the notice of the strangers. “ Your wives and daughters," he tauntingly said, “are such tender and fastidious objects, that they can neither drive a sheep to the waste, nor recall a wandering camel. They can neither bake, nor boil, nor grind, nor bring water. Instead of serving you, you have to serve them and assist them. They are the sheikhs, and you are the slaves.” This impudence met with a corresponding response. “Get down from your camels, and we shall show you that you lie. Our wives are women ; but not so are yours, who are so dirty and smell so rank, that a man cannot sit with them in the same tent.” Worse than this followed, and had not we peremptorily interfered, the consequences might have been lamentable, as both parties became absolutely frantic with rage. a Wednesday, 15th March. Our progress to-day, leading to the N.N.W., was wholly among the desolate hills which form the south-east boundary of Judah, and which, generally speaking, run-as far as we observed, from the course of the cross Wádís and the range of the ridges over which we passed-from west to east. We started at a quarter past seven in the morning, and began the ascent of the Nakb elMirzabah. It is long and tedious, winding among abrupted rocks and steep chalk hills, with a bare, broken, and slippery path, affording very bad footing both to man and beast. At a quarter to ten we reached the summit, and there, keeping the deathlike wildness of the scene before us, we sat down to breakfast. The descent on the western side of the Nakb is not so difficult as that to the east. On clearing it, still keeping among the hills, we crossed two Wádís, Shebíyah and el-Marrah, which are not mentioned in any of our maps. They run in the general direction of the hills. We halted for the night in Wádí Fikrah, the "Valley of Thoughtfulness," which is both large and deep, at a quarter past five, about an hour sooner than usual, our camels having been nearly completely knocked up by the badness of the way. Jebel Mádarah, an isolated hill, under which, according to the Badawín, as noticed by Lord Lindsay, "God crushed a village for its vices," lay close upon us to the left hand. The range of Mount Seir to the east of the Arabah, was in sight of us to the right whenever we were on the higher grounds during the day. Its northern districts are denominated Jebál, or the "Mountains." To the eye, however, they do not appear so lofty as those of esh-Shírah, further to the south. To-day, we must have been a little to the west of Dr. Robinson's route from Petra, as our observations have 1 Count Bertou says, that his Arabs gave this hill also the name of "Kadessa," which he associates with the KADESH of Scripture.-Bulletin de la WADI FIKRAH-NAKB ES-SAFAH. 341 not accorded with his descriptions. His path was evidently much more devious than that which we pursued, and some of the Wádís mentioned by him which did not occur to us, must, I think, not run according to the indications of his map. There is so much confusion among the hills here, however, that nothing but the most minute survey of them could give any thing like accuracy to any delineation which could be attempted of them.1 Thursday, 16th March.-Our course this day was pretty much in the direction of N.W. by W. After leaving the Wádí Fikrah, we got among a range of hills, by the wild and desolate Wádí er-Rákib, or Yemen, I think, of our maps,2 and escaped, to some extent, the difficulties of the pass of es-Şafáh to the right. In the name of Șafáh, Dr. Robinson thinks that he recognises the ZEPHATH of Scripture, which, in Judges i. 17, is said to be identical with Hormah. The Doctor found no ruins in this neighbourhood except those of a small fort, "obviously designed to guard the pass ;" and that any town-and one, too, with a distinct chief, such as 1 Lord Lindsay, referring to these parts, with his usual felicity of expression, correctly says, "We entered the low barren ridges that skirt Wady Araba on the west, and for several hours during this and the following day, traversed a country of the most utter desolation, hills succeeding hills without the slightest picturesque beauty, covered with loose flints, sand, and gravel, sterility in its most repulsive garb,-it made the very heart ache and the spirits sink." "Such is Edom now," he goes on to state, most desolate,' as prophecy foretold it should be, at a time when literature and commerce, arts and sciences, were still flourishing in the land of Job, and the palm trees of Idumea were as proverbial in men's mouths as those of Palestine, now, I believe not one survives-at least, I saw none."-Letters on the Holy Land, vol. ii. p. 45. As this is a passage, considering its pious and enlightened source, very likely to be quoted by writers on the fulfilment of prophecy, who have not themselves visited these parts, I think it right to mention, that the desolation so graphically described, is merely that of the great and terrible wilderness, and as old as the present geological era of the world. 2 Though I give this according to my original notes, it strikes me that I may have misunderstood the Arabs, as giving the name of Rákib to the Wádí instead of Arkúb, which means simply a "defile." |