BURIED CITIES. 443 



ered here. Near the city is the Island of Philse, the last resort of idolatry in 

 Egypt and in the Roman empire. Here Isis and Osiris were worshipped for over 

 an hundred years after the imperial decrees abolishing the old religions and sub- 

 stituting Christianity in their stead. The most wonderful thing about all the 

 Egyptian ruins is the apparent ease with which the ancient architects and en- 

 gineers handled the huge blocks of granite, as if they were no heavier than so 

 many bricks. The utter worthlessness of human life and effort in those days is 

 shown by the excessive labor bestowed on the statues, columns and other monu- 

 mental works, the cost of which to-day, at our present rates, would exhaust the 

 treasury of all the powers of Europe. 



Arabia Petra, or the Rocky Arabia, was until comparatively recent times, 

 believed to be a desert even more uninhabitable than the sandy districts, but the 

 investigations of the present century have shown that it once supported a vast 

 population and had a great number of strongly fortified and peculiarly built 

 cities. About four years ago Captain Burton was sent out to explore the region 

 east of the Red Sea and found the lost cities of the Midianites, mentioned in 

 Scripture, and near them very extensive gold mines, which bore evidence of 

 great antiquity, and less than two years ago he took out a colony to re-occupy 

 these cities and work those mines which he considers to be the veritable Ophir 

 of Solomon's time. Petra was first inhabited by cave-dwellers, who gradually 

 improved upon their excavations until the ruins of that district are now among 

 the most remarkable relics of the past. Temples, tombs, palaces, fortifications, 

 and private dwellings are all, without exception, excavated from the sides of 

 high cliffs, and thus form unique structures, the like of which is not elsewhere 

 known. The peculiar architecture is suggested by the charactersof the country, 

 which is rent into vast chasms 200 or 300 feet broad, and having perpendicular 

 sides of sandstone and limestone. The great cities of this region are always in 

 these chasms, and the ruins of the rock-hewn edifices extend often for many 

 miles. Passing through Arabia and entering Palestine the most notable list of 

 buried cities is found in the capital. The heights of Jerusalem were first held by 

 the Jebusites, who had a fortified city there; then taken by David, who des- 

 troyed the city and built another on its ruins. Since then the city has passed 

 through many sieges, and has been time after time destroyed, another rising on 

 its ashes, until the original Jerusalem of David is now many feet underground. 

 The city has been held in turn by the Jews, Assyrians, Persians, Egyptians, 

 Greeks, Romans, Saracens, Crusaders, and Turks, and each change of govern- 

 ment was attended with more or less violence and destruction of property. No 

 less than six Jerusalems, one above the other, have been counted by those who 

 sink their shafts for the purpose of making scientific examinations of the ruins. 

 The workmanship of the Jerusalem of Solomon's time bears favorable compari- 

 son with that of Greece. Rome or Egypt. In the temple platforms there are 

 found blocks of solid granite forty feet long, ten feet broad and six feet thick,, 

 laid upon each other, and fitted so nicely that it is sometimes almost impossible 

 to discover the joint, increasing our amazement at the engineering skill that 



