PERPENDICULAR WALLS OF PETRA'S ENTRANCE GORGE 

 The only entrance into the rock-encircled city is a narrow gorge one mile in lenglh. Rocks tower 

 perpendicularly on either side, obscuring the sunlight hundreds of feet overhead. Looking up from the 

 abyss, high precipices appear through occasional openings, their ragged peaks, fantastically tinted in pink, 

 yellow, and blue, glittering in sunshine. The passage is now half choked up, but shows signs of the care 

 with which it wa.s kept open in the prosperous time^ of Petra. The river was covered with a massive 

 stone pavement and banked by stone walls. A channel was cut on each side at a higher level to provide 

 for a constant supply of water to the city at all seasons, and a conduit of earthern pipes was bedded in 

 mortar in a groove of the rocks. To provide for the swollen river in the rainy season, a long shaft twenty 

 feet square was hewn through the wall of the gorge into the next valley 



The photograph was taken from the doorway of the Khazneh showing the gorge at its inner end 

 274 



