ON PETRA, THE ROCK-HEWN CAPITAL OF IDUMMA. 158 
and other meteorological influences to which they are exposed accounts for 
the manner in which they have disappeared. Let us take the case of our 
own furefathers. All their habitations have gone except those we find dug or 
hewn out in the form of caves. No doubt the caverns found in the hills and 
roc :s have served at all times alternately as residences and as tombs. This 
must have been the case in all countries where the population has lived at 
the base of sandstone and limestone cliffs. This, I think, is the only way in 
which we can account for there being no traces of the dwellings belonging 
to the former population of Petra. Of course, it may be sngyested, from 
the social condition of this people in ancient times, that a vast majority of 
them were in a servile condition, and I am afraid were very badly lodged. 
Moreover, I do not think they can have been possessed of the structural 
advantages of the present day ; and consequently we must not expect to find 
cottages equal to the dwellings of our modern artisans and Jabourers. All 
we can tell is that their dwellings were of a perishable character. It isa 
marvellous thing that all people appear to have been influenced by devo- 
tional feeling, and in all places were accustomed to dedicate their best things 
to the worship of their God, and therefore their most elaborate structures, 
their most beautiful carvings,—whether we find them in the forests 
of America or the temples of Villafranca, or in any other part of the world 
where any measure of civilisation has prevailed,—and the best and most ornate 
of their edifices, are those that have been erected to the worship of God, 
in that way testifying to the intuitive religiuus sense which recognises the 
existence of a Superior Being. 
Mr. T. Cuariin, M.D.—I think it must be admitted that these old-world 
matters are much more intimately associated with many of our modern ideas 
and with much of our more recent history than we aresometimesapt to imagine. 
Personally I feel exceedingly indebted to Professor Hull for the interesting 
and able paper he has put before us. In making a few remarks upon the 
_ subject, I ought to premise that I have never been to Petra myself, although 
I have been very near it, but from time to time I have been in intercourse 
with people coming from that remote part of the world. Tt is interesting 
to remember that in the barbarous times which succeeded the death of 
Alexander the Great, when the Asamonean family rose in power, the 
invasion of Idumea took place, and the country became subject to the 
Jews. Antipater, who afterwards became Prefect of that district, was the 
father of the famous Herod, who built the Temple of Jerusalem which 
existed at the time of our Lord. Christianity prevailed in that district in 
the earlier centuries of the Christian Era, and a Bishop of Petra still exists, 
although he has no clergy to superintend and no flocks to look after. I 
remember him as a very venerable and amiable man, and his office is 
one that possesses a certain interest through his being what is called in 
Jerusalem the “Fire Bishop,’ by which is meant that he is the officiating 
Bishop on the day after Good Friday, when the remarkable ceremony of 
the Holy Fire takes place, the pilgrims who assemble at the Holy Sepulchre 
believing that fire comes miraculously fron: the tomb of our Lord, Another 
