250 MAJOR-GENERAL SIR CHARLES WILSON, K.C.M.G., K.C.B., F.R.S., 
sons at the front in South Africa, who I am sure we all hope will 
return home to their country not only safely but scatheless. [ Ap- 
plause.]| I think, under the circumstances, we are particularly 
indebted to Sir Charles Wilson for coming forward this evening. 
To refer to the subject of his lecture, I may mention that a short 
time ago | was invited by the Royal Artillery Institution at 
Woolwich to give a lecture before the officers. I gave them two 
or three subjects to choose from, but the Exodus, at any rate, was 
the subject which they themselves chose. Just as I was about to 
go I read a message from a distinguished literary friend living in 
London to say that there was ‘“‘no Exodus.” I replied if there 
was no Exodus then William the Conqueror never landed on the 
shores of England! [Applause.] And I wish my friend could 
have been here this evening to hear the testimony of Sir Charles 
Wilson, from actual observation and experience, that there had 
been an Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt to Palestine. 
I will take, if the lecturer will permit me, several points in 
rotation which have been referred to. In reference to “ faults ” 
in the strata, I go so far as to think that it is exceedingly 
probable that whatever faults run along the valley of the Nile 
(and I have seen them myself in more than one place) they are 
geologically contemporaneous with the great Jordan-Arabah 
fault, which bounds the region lying over to the east of the 
Jordan-Arabah valley—in other words, the tableiand of Edom and 
Moab. 
Now about Kerak, which he described and represented on the 
sheet. When our party, sert out by the Committee of the Palestine 
Exploration Fund, which included Lord Kitchener, were encamped 
down by the Dead Sea, we had a polite invitation from the Sheik 
of Kerak to pay him a visit. No doubt his intention was entirely 
hospitable; but recollecting the experience of my friend Canon 
Tristram when he found himself within the walls of Kerak, I 
think we were unanimous that we would not trust our precious 
skins in the same isolated district, where we might be kept a con- 
siderable time and only freed on paying a handsome ransom. We 
sent back a polite message to say that our time was so short that 
we regretted we were unable to accept his hospitable invitation. 
Now Sir Charles Wilson mentions the names of several valleys 
that I have personally visited and explored to a certain distance, 
and one he identifies as the Brook Zered. I entirely agree 
