of Petra, a City excavated from the solid Rock: 239 



several stories. This interior economy made us suspect that 

 it was not a temple, but rather a palace or private edifice. 

 Whatever may have been its nature, it seems to have been 

 destined to the same purpose as the ruined building at " Bait- 

 el-Carm," which we afterwards saw from our camp above Dib- 

 debar, and which is the only considerable work of masonry 

 existing at Petra. Upon the summit of the other mound there 

 is a mass of ruins of some solidity, but no very definite shape. 

 The Nubian geographer, climate three, says that the houses of 

 Petra were excavated in the rock. Now, that this was not uni- 

 versally true, is evident from the great quantity of stones em- 

 ployed in the lesser kinds of edifices which are scattered over the 

 i whole site. But it is also true that there are grottos in great 

 numbers, which are certainly not sepulchral, especially near 

 the palace. There is one in particular which presents a front 

 of four windows with a large and lofty door-way in the cen- 

 tre. In the interior, one chamber of about sixty feet in length, 

 and of a breadth proportioned, occupies three of the windows 

 and the door ; at the lower end, the fourth window seems al- 

 lotted to a very small sleeping-chamber, which is not brought 

 down to the level of the floor of the great apartment, but has 

 a chamber below it of the same size, giving no light but from 

 the entrance. This, which seems the best of all the excavated 

 residences, has no ornament whatever on the exterior ; and 

 the same applies to all the other excavations of this nature. 



The access to this house is by a shelf gained out of the side 

 of the mountain ; other inferior habitations open upon it, 

 and more particularly an oven and some cisterns. These 

 antique dwellings are close to an angle of the mountain, where 

 the bed of the stream, after having traversed the city, passes 

 again into a narrow defile, along whose steep sides a sort of 

 excavated suburb is continued, of very small and mean cham- 

 bers, set one above the other, without much regularity, like so 

 many pigeon-holes in the rock, with flights of steps, or narrow 

 inclined planes leading up ta them. The main wall and ceil- 

 ing only of some were in the solid ; the fronts and partitions 

 being built of very indifferent masonry with cement. 



Following this defile farther down, the river reappears flow- 

 ing with considerable rapidity ; though the water is plentifql* 



