"The people," says the Bishop, "we are told, were supplied with manna. But there was no miraculous provision of food for the herds and flocks. They were left to gather sustenance as they could, in that inhospitable wilderness," p. 65. What information have we as to the sheep and oxen possessed by the Israelites in the desert? When they

left Egypt they had "flocks, and herds, even very much cattle" (chap. xii. 38). Under this expression it is held that at least 2,000,000 sheep and oxen are included. But we have seen, under chap. xii., that this estimate is not made on good grounds. The words "very much cattle" do not warrant such an exaggerated estimate. Jacob, even when still serving Laban, is said to have had "much cattle;" but we never imagine the expression implies immense herds. It is doubtful if

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in his case we are warranted to reckon them by hundreds. If in the case under notice we count by thousands, we will be much nearer the truth than the bishop is, who pleads for hundreds of thousands. In Numb. xi. the lusting of the people for flesh is described. "Israel wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat?" (ver. 4.) Moses asks, "Whence should I have flesh to give unto all this people?" (ver. 13). And again, "The people, among whom I am, are six hundred thousand footmen; and thou hast said, I will give them flesh, that they may eat a whole month. Shall the flocks and the herds be slain for them, to suffice them? or shall all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them, to suffice them? And the Lord said unto Moses, Is the Lord's hand waxed short? thou shalt see now whether my word shall come to pass unto thee or not" (ver. 21, 22). This happened in the second year of the Exodus. Why does Moses refer to the 600,000 warriors? Is it not that he might show, that all the flocks and herds then in the wilderness would have been insufficient to feed them even for a short period, when they lusted for the flesh? And does not the answer of the Lord imply the same thing, in addition to the declaration, that as his power had been miraculously shown in Egypt, in the Exodus, and the passage at the Red Sea, it would continue to be so in the desert wanderings? But Dr. Colenso is a much better judge of what Moses meant than Moses himself was! It is quite clear from the inspired account of Israel's life in the wilderness, that the chief sustenance of the people was to be manna. "And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no. And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live" (Deut. viii. 2, 3). The flocks and herds appear chiefly to have been associated with the religious life of the people; the manna was of a nature to provide for all the requirements of the body, and would be fitted to nourish both blood, and bone, and muscle.

Looking then at the wilderness provision of food for the flocks and herds, the herbage might be amply sufficient for them without miraculous interference. Miracle is not, however, to be banished from this aspect of wilderness life, merely because it is not directly stated, or because the acknowledgment of it would offend the philosophy of Dr.

Colenso. It is quite within the range of possibility, that the wilderness should have been as waste and howling when Israel wandered in it, as it is now, and, yet, that near the encampments of the people rich pasture grounds may have existed at that time which are not met with now. No traveller in the Arabian Desert scruples to describe it as waste, howling, awful in its solitude, grand in its very desolation, nothing but dreariness and death, and the like, because he finds here and there spots of rich verdure.

If we read Dr. Stanley's description of the desert in the light of these remarks, we can at once see how, even without a miracle, the flocks and herds of Israel could be sustained. "How far," he asks, "can we be sure that we have the same outlines, and colours, and forms, that were presented to those who wandered through these mountains and valleys three thousand years ago? It might at first sight seem, that in this, as in other respects, the interest of the Desert of Sinai would be unique; that here, more than in any other great stage of historical events, the outward scene must remain precisely as it was; that the convent of Justinian with its gardens, the ruins of Paran, with the remains of hermits' cells long since desolate, are the only alterations which human hands have introduced into these wild solitudes. Even the Egyptian monuments and sculptures which are carved out of the sandstone are already there, as the Israelites passed by-memorials at once of their servitude and of their deliverance.

"But a difficulty has often been stated that renders it necessary somewhat to modify this assumption of absolute identity between the ancient and modern desert. The question is asked-'How could a tribe so numerous and powerful as, on any hypothesis, the Israelites must have been, be maintained in this inhospitable desert?' It is no answer to say that they were sustained by miracles: for except the manna, the quails, and the three interventions in regard to water, none such are mentioned in the Mosaic history; and if we have no warrant to take away, we have no warrant to add. Nor is it any answer to say that this difficulty is a proof of the impossibility, and therefore of the unhistorical character, of the narrative. For, as Ewald has well shown, the general truth of the wanderings in the wilderness is an essential preliminary to the whole of the subsequent history of Israel. Much may be allowed for the spread of the tribes of Israel far and wide through the whole peninsula, and also for the constant means of support from their own flocks and herds. Something, too, might be elicited from the undoubted fact, that a population nearly, if not quite

equal, to the whole permanent population of the peninsula does actually pass through the desert, in the caravan of the five thousand African pilgrims on their way to Mecca. But amongst these considerations, it is important to observe what indications there may be of the mountains of Sinai having been able to furnish greater resources than at present. These indications are well summed up by Ritter. There is no doubt that the vegetation of the wadys has considerably decreased. In part, this would be an inevitable effect of the violence of the winter torrents. The trunks of palm-trees washed up on the shore of the Dead Sea, from which the living tree has now for many centuries disappeared, show what may have been the devastation produced amongst those mountains, where the floods, especially in earlier times, must have been violent to a degree unknown in Palestine; whilst the peculiar cause the impregnation of salt-which has preserved the vestiges of the older vegetation there, has here of course no existence. The traces of such a destruction were pointed out to Burckhardt on the eastern side of Mount Sinai, as having occurred within half a century before his visit; also to Wellsted, as having occurred near Tûr, in 1832. In part, the same result has followed from the reckless waste of the Bedouin tribes-reckless in destroying, and careless in replenishing. A fire, a pipe, lit under a grove of desert trees, may clear away the vegetation of a whole valley.

"The acacia trees have been of late years ruthlessly destroyed by the Bedouins for the sake of charcoal; especially since they have been compelled by the pasha of Egypt to pay a tribute in charcoal for an assault committed on the Mecca caravan in the year 1823. Charcoal from the acacia is, in fact, the chief, perhaps it might be said the only, traffic of the peninsula. Camels are constantly met, loaded with this wood, on the way between Cairo and Suez. And as this probably has been carried on in great degree by the monks of the convent, it may account for the fact, that whereas in the valleys of the western and the eastern clusters this tree abounds more or less, yet in the central cluster itself, to which modern tradition certainly, and geographical considerations probably, point as the mountain of the burning "thorn," and the scene of the building of the ark and all the utensils of the tabernacle from this very wood, there is now not a single acacia to be seen. If this be so, the greater abundance of vegetation would, as is well known, have furnished a greater abundance of water, and this again would re-act on the vegetation, from which the means of subsistence would be procured. How much may be done by a careful use of such

water and such soil as the desert supplies, may be seen by the only two spots to which, now, a diligent and provident attention is paid; namely, the gardens at the wells of Moses, under the care of the French and English agents from Suez, and the gardens in the valleys of Jebel Mûsa, under the care of the Greek monks of the convent of St. Catherine. Even as late as the seventeenth century, if we may trust the expression of Monconys, the wady er-Râhah in front of the convent, now entirely bare, was a vast green plain '-'une grande champagne verte.' And that there was in ancient times a greater population than at present, which would, again, by thus furnishing heads and hands to consider and to cultivate these spots of vegetation, tend to increase and to preserve them-may be inferred from several indications. The Amalekites, who contested the passage of the desert with Israel, were-if we may draw any inferences from this very fact, as well as from their wide-spread name and power even to the time of Saul and David, and from the allusion to them in Balaam's prophecy as the first of the nations'-something more than a mere handful of Bedouins. The Egyptian copper-mines, and monuments, and hieroglyphics, in Surâbit el-Kâhadîm and the wady Mughareh, imply a degree of intercourse between Egypt and the peninsula in the earliest days of Egypt, of which all other traces have long ceased. The ruined cities of Edom in the mountains east of the Arabah, and the remains and history of Petra itself, indicate a traffic and a population in these remote regions which now seems to us almost inconceivable."