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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Peninsula, Mount Seir, Edom and Moab, 

 Amman and the Jabbok, to the Jordan 

 and Jericho. It was a journey of about 

 a thousand miles on camels and horses, 

 and occupied about 40 days — a day for 

 each year of the Exodus. We camped 

 literally within the Old Testament, pitch- 

 ing our tents 32 times between the Nile 

 and the Jordan. It was a physical review 

 -of some of the greatest events and char- 

 acters in human history. 



There was a strange thrill in dating 

 letters from "The Jabbok (Gen. 32 : 22) ," 

 -where Jacob wrestled with the angel ; 

 from "The Nile (Gen. 41:1)," where 

 Joseph first came into contact with Pha- 

 raoh ; from "Sinai (Exodus 33:11)," 

 where Jehovah spake with Moses face to 

 face, and. from "Nebo (Deut. 34:6)," 

 in the land of Moab, where Moses had 

 liis only view of the Promised Land, and 

 -where "the angels of God upturned the 

 sod for that lonely and unknown grave." 

 "While it cannot be insisted too sharply 

 that the Exodus is no imaginary journey, 

 there is a sense in which the old lady 

 was right, for so many of these events 

 and places belong to the geography of the 

 human soul in its exile, its bondage, its 

 wanderings, its glimpses of the Promised 

 Land, and its return to home and heaven 

 at last. 



Crossing the Suez arm of the Red Sea 

 and journeying "three days in the wilder- 

 ness," we spent a quiet Sabbath among 

 "the palms of Elim" and drank from its 

 ■"springs of water." Another six days' 

 journey carried us along "by the Red 

 Sea," through "the wilderness of sin," 

 past Rephidim to Mount Sinai, on whose 

 sublime summits we spent a part of our 

 second Sabbath. Another five camps car- 

 ried us down from Sinai past Hazeroth, 

 through the "wilderness of Paran," and 

 -well up along the coast of the Gulf of 

 Akaba to Elath and Ezion-geber. 



Crossing the great cleft of the Araba 

 south of the Dead Sea, we climbed into 

 the mountains of Edom and from the 

 summit of the traditional Mount Hor. 

 had, like Aaron, our first glimpse of the 

 Promised Land. Then followed a series 

 of camps by the Arnon, along the breezy 



plateaus of Moab, culminating in a never- 

 to-be-forgotten Sabbath on Nebo itself, 

 with its matchless view embracing so 

 much of all succeeding Bible history, not 

 forgetting Greece and Rome and the em- 

 pires lasting till the present hour. 



For over against the sky-line, neglect- 

 ing every other feature in the wide 

 expanse as seen from Nebo, rises the 

 Mount of Olives, where Russia, Austria, 

 Germany, and the other Christian nations 

 of the West are still striving for pos- 

 session of the Promised Land, while the 

 real owners, the Jews, are scattered over 

 the face of the earth. It is a small and 

 unimportant-looking land upon a map of 

 the world, and yet so great in human 

 history. After Nebo came some lovely 

 camps by the quiet waters of the Jabbok, 

 among the woody glades of Gilead, on 

 the "stormy banks" of the Jordan, which 

 marks the close of the Exodus and the 

 beginning of the conquest of Canaan. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE EXODUS 



The problem of the Exodus, neces- 

 sarily difficult in itself, has been compli- 

 cated by a misreading of the Bible, by 

 the confusion of mental processes and 

 ideas which belong to other lands and 

 centuries, by absolute misconceptions 

 gained through art and song, and by the 

 exaggeration of a number of subsidiary 

 and minor problems which vanish with 

 the first breath of the desert air. Many 

 are apt to think of the Children of Israel 

 as spending 40 years on the road to 

 Canaan, but as a matter of fact "39 of 

 these years were spent in camp and only 

 one year was consumed in covering the 

 entire journey of 1,100 miles between 

 Raamses and the River Jordan." 



Others are apt to think of the Exodus 

 as having occurred in such a remote and 

 vaguely indefinite past that we can never 

 know anything accurate of its exact loca- 

 tion in time. 



While authorities have differed to the 

 extent of 100 or even 200 years, yet it is 

 certain that each fresh examination of 

 the problem in the light of the most 

 recent discoveries brings us closer to the 

 actual dates. There are exeat difficulties 



