CONCLUSION.

THESE pages have made public property a secret jealously kept by me, because it was not wholly my own, during the last twenty-three years. My reconnaissance of the Midianite coast-lands in April 1877 has not only proved the existence of gold in the Arabian Peninsula, so long denied by the highest authorities: it has introduced another rich metalliferous region to the world. By discovering vasts deposits of iron in manifold shapes, it has shown the curious error of the ancient and classical geographers; and it has remarkably confirmed the list of metals, "the gold and the silver, the brass (copper), the iron, the tin, and the lead," taken from the Midianites (Num. xxxi. 22); adding to them zinc, antimony, and wolfram, or tungsten; with others of minor importance.

The Khedivial Expedition was, it is true, prevented, by the advanced season, from carrying out the discovery; from tracing the valleys to their water-sheds, and from laying down the superficies and the limits of the new Ophir. These measures, which may result in opening an unworked California,

must be left to a "serious exploration," of which H.H. the Viceroy has courteously invited me to take the lead.

The once wealthy and commerical Land of Midian, now "destitute of that whereof it was once full," has become a desolation among the nations. The cities and goodly castles of the sea-board are ruinous heaps, almost level with the ground. "The Desert has resumed its rights; the intrusive hand of cultivation has been driven back; the race that dwelt here have perished; and their works now look abroad in loneliness and silence over the mighty waste." The interior, formerly so rich in oases if not in smiling field and pasture-land, has been disforested to a howling wilderness; and the area of some three thousand square miles, which, thirtyone centuries ago, could send into the field 135,000 swordsmen, is abandoned to a few hundreds of a mongrel Egypto-Bedawi race, half peasants, half nomads, whose only objects in life are to plunder, maim, and murder one another.

But Destruction is a mere phase of Reproduction; and man can do again what man has undone. The winter climate of Midian is admirable; and even a population of European miners could work in it from October to May. The summers, though hot, are not unhealthy, and the lofty and picturesque mountain ranges that line the coast are ready-made

Sanitaria. Every valley, with its perennial spring, which these rain-attractors draw from the clouds, is capable of cultivation; of smiling once more with garden, orchard, and luxuriant field.

Upon a coast-line shown by the chart to be only eighteen (dir. geog.) miles in length, the Expedition found three large mining-establishments, the Wadies Taryam, Sharmá, and Aynúnah, where, I have reason to think, the precious metals were worked till the seventh century of our era, and perhaps much later. If the Ancients, with their imperfect technological appliances, could make these places pay, à fortiori we Moderns may hope to turn them into sources of wealth; whilst the interior, should it be what I am convinced it is, will presently cause a total change in the condition of North-Western Arabia. Under the progessive and civilising rule of Egypt, which may now be said to have entered into the community of European nations, Midian will awake from her long and deadly lethargy; her skeletons of departed glory will revive; and she will enjoy a happier and more vigorous life than any she has yet known.

I finished my sixteen days in the old land, whose novelties are so striking, with the conviction that Voltaire was, for once, in error when he wrote

"Nous ne vivons jamais, nous attendons la vie.”