These are, a channel on each side of the river for conveying the water to the city; numerous tombs ; above two hundred and fifty sepulchres, or excavations; many mausoleums, one, in particular, of colossal dimensions in perfect preservation, and a work of immense labour, containing a chamber sixteen paces square and above twenty-five feet in height, with a colonnade in front thirty-five feet high, crowned with a pediment highly ornamented, &c. ; two large truncated pyramids, and a theatre with all its benches, capable of containing about three thousand spectators, ALL cut out of the rock. In some places these sepulchres are excavated one over the other, and the side of the mountain is so perpendicular, that it seems impossible to approach the uppermost, no path whatever being visible. "The ground is covered with heaps of hewn stones, foundations of buildings, fragments of columns, and vestiges of paved streets, all clearly indicating that a large city once existed here. On the left bank of the river is a rising ground, extending westward for nearly three quarters of a mile, entirely covered with similar remains. On the right bank, where the ground is more elevated, ruins of the same description are to be seen. There are also the remains of a palace and of several temples. In the eastern cliff there are upwards of fifty separate sepulchres close to each other." These are not the symbols of a feeble race, nor of a people that were to perish utterly. But a judgment was denounced against the strongholds of Edom. The prophetic threatening has not proved an empty boast, and it could not have been the word of an uninspired mortal. I will make thee small among the heathen. Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill: though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee Burckhardt's Travels in Syria, pp. 422-432.

down from thence, saith the Lord. Also Edom shall be a desolation.

These descriptions given by the prophet and by the observer are so analogous, and the precise locality of the scene, from its peculiar and characteristic features, so identified,—and yet the application of the prophecy to the fact so remote from the thoughts or view of Burckhardt, as to be altogether overlooked,-that his single delineation of the ruins of the chief (and assuredly the strongest and best fortified) city of Edom was deemed in the first edition of this treatise, and in the terms of the preceding paragraph, an illustration of the prophecy, alike adequate and legitimate. And though deprecating any allusion whatever of a personal nature, and earnest only for the elucidation of the truth, the author yet trusts that he may here be permitted to disclaim the credit of having been the first to assign to the prediction its wonderful and appropriate fulfilment; and it is with no slight gratification that he is now enabled to adduce higher evidence than any opinion of his own, and to state, that the self-same prophecy has been applied by otherswith the Bible in their hands, and with the very scene before them-to the self-same spot. Yet it may be added, that this coincident application of the prophecy, without any collusion, and without the possibility at the time of any interchange of sentiment, affords, at least, a strong presumptive evidence of the accuracy of the application, and of the truth of the prophecy; and it may well lead to some reflection in the mind of any reader, if scepticism has not barred every avenue against conviction.

On entering the pass which conducts to the theatre of Petra, Captains Irby and Mangles remark ;-"The ruins of the city here burst on the view, in their full grandeur, shut in on the opposite side by barren craggy precipices from which numerous ravines and

valleys branch out in all directions; the sides of the mountains covered with an endless variety of excavated tombs and private dwellings, (Othou that dwellest in the clefts of THE ROCK, &c.—Jer. xlix. 16,) presented altogether the most singular scene we ever beheld."

In still farther confirmation of the identity of the site, and the accuracy of the application, it may be added in the words of Dr. Vincent, that "the name of this capital, in all the various languages in which it occurs, implies a rock, and as such it is described in the Scriptures, in Strabo, and Al Edrissi." And in a note he enumerates among the various names having all the same signification-Sela, a rock, (the very word here used in the original,) Petra, a rock, the Greek name, (which has precisely the same signification,) and The Rock, pre-eminently-expressly reterring to this passage of Scripture.

S

Captains Irby and Mangles, having, together with Mr. Bankes and Mr. Legh, spent two days in diligently examining them, give a more particular detail of the ruins of Petra than Burckhardt's account supplied; and the more full the description, the more precise and wonderful does the prophecy appear. Near the spot where they awaited the decision of the Arabs, "the high land was covered upon both its sides, and on its summits, with lines and solid masses of dry wall. The former appeared to be traces of ancient cultivation, the solid ruins seemed to be only the remains of towers for watching in harvest and vintage time. The whole neighbourhood of the spot bears similar traces of former industry; all which seem to indicate the vicinity of a great metropolis." A narrow and circuitous defile, surrounded on each side by precipitous or perpendicular rocks, varying

* Commerce of the Ancients, vol. ii. p. 264.
Şee Blaney, in loco.

Captains Irby and Mangles's Travels, p. 402.