of Petra, and not unlike a row of private boxes in a modern theatre.

The whole theatre is at this day in such a state of preservation, that if the tenants of the tombs around could once more rise into life, they might take their old places on its seats, and listen to the declamation of their favourite player. To me the stillness of a ruined city is nowhere so impressive as when sitting on the steps of its theatre; once thronged with the gay and pleasure-seeking, but now given up to solitude and desolation. Day after day these seats had been filled, and the now silent rocks had echoed to the applauding shout of thousands; and little could an ancient Edomite imagine that a solitary stranger, from a then unknown world, would one day be wandering among the ruins of his proud and wonderful city, meditating upon the fate of a race that has for ages passed away. Where are ye, inhabitants of this desolate city? ye who once sat on the seats of this theatre, the young, the high-born, the beautiful, and brave; who once rejoiced in your riches and power, and lived as if there was no grave? Where are ye now? Even the very tombs, whose open doors are stretching away in long ranges before the eyes of the wondering traveller, cannot reveal the mystery of your doom: your dry bones are gone; the robber has invaded your graves, and your very ashes have been swept away to make room for the wandering Arab of the desert.

But we need not stop at the days when a gay population were crowding to this theatre. In the earliest periods of recorded time, long before this theatre was built, and long before the tragic muse was known, a great city stood here. When Esau, having sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, came to his portion among the mountains of Seir; and Edom, growing in power and strength, became presumptuous and haughty, until, in her pride, when Israel prayed a passage through her country, Edom said unto Israel, “Thou

shalt not pass by me, lest I come out against thee with the sword."

Amid all the terrible denunciations against the land of Idumea, "her cities and the inhabitants thereof,” this proud city among the rocks, doubtless for its extraordinary sins, was always marked as a subject of extraordinary vengeance. "I have sworn by myself, saith the Lord, that Bozrah (the strong or fortified city) shall become a desolation, a reproach, and a waste, and a curse, and all the cities thereof shall be perpetual waste. Lo, I will make thee small among the heathen, and despised among men. Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thy heart, oh thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rocks, that holdest the height of the hill; though thou shouldst make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord."* "They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing; and thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof, and it shall be a habitation for dragons, and a court for owls."†

I would that the skeptic could stand as I did among the ruins of this city among the rocks, and there open the sacred book and read the words of the inspired penman, written when this desolate place was one of the greatest cities in the world. I see the scoff arrested, his cheek pale, his lip quivering, and his heart quaking with fear, as the ruined city cries out to him in a voice loud and powerful as that of one risen from the dead; though he would not believe Moses and the prophets, he believes the handwriting of God himself in the desolation and eternal ruin around him. We sat on the steps of the theatre, and made our noonday meal; our drink was from the pure stream that rolled down at our feet. Paul and myself were alone. We scared the par

* Jeremiah xlix,, 13, 16.

† Isaiah xxxiv., 14, 15.

TOMBS OF PETRA.

59

tridge before us as we ascended, and I broke for a moment the stillness of the desolate city by the report of my gun.

All around the theatre, in the sides of the mountains, were ranges of tombs; and directly opposite they rose in long tiers one above another. Having looked into those around the theatre, I crossed to those opposite; and, carefully as the brief time I had would allow, examined the whole range. Though I had no small experience in exploring catacombs and tombs, these were so different from any I had seen that I found it difficult to distinguish the habitations of the living from the chambers of the dead. The façades or architectural decorations of the front were everywhere handsome; and in this they differed materially from the tombs in Egypt; in the latter the doors were simply an opening in the rock, and all the grandeur and beauty of the work within; while here the door was always imposing in its appearance, and the interior was generally a simple chamber, unpainted and unsculptured.

I say that I could not distinguish the dwellings from the tombs; but this was not invariably the case; some were clearly tombs, for there were pits in which the dead had been laid, and others were as clearly dwellings, being without a place for the deposite of the dead. One of these last particularly attracted my attention. It consisted of one large chamber, having on one side, at the foot of the wall, a stone bench about a foot high, and two or three broad, in form like the divans in the East at the present day; at the other end were several small apartments, hewn out of the rock, with partition walls left between them, like stalls in a stable, and these had probably been the sleeping apartments of the different members of the family, the mysteries of bars and bolts, of folding-doors and third stories, being unknown in the days of the ancient Edomites. There were no paintings or decorations of any kind within the chamber; but the rock out of which it was hewn, like