The Jordan valley and Petra . he baseto purples and yellows and crimsons higher up,bathed and transformed in the brilliant sunshine,till it seemed like an enchanted fairyland. Themain mass from side to side was not less thanfifteen miles in extent, and the height, as it clearedthe surrounding ridges, appeared to be not less thanfour thousand feet above the sea. All the outlineswere smoothed and rounded, as though coveredwith a veil of diaphanous light. Beyond this massto the left stood the sharper peak of Mount Hor,with Aarons tomb glistening in the sunlight, andbelow them both, five thousand
The Jordan valley and Petra . he baseto purples and yellows and crimsons higher up,bathed and transformed in the brilliant sunshine,till it seemed like an enchanted fairyland. Themain mass from side to side was not less thanfifteen miles in extent, and the height, as it clearedthe surrounding ridges, appeared to be not less thanfour thousand feet above the sea. All the outlineswere smoothed and rounded, as though coveredwith a veil of diaphanous light. Beyond this massto the left stood the sharper peak of Mount Hor,with Aarons tomb glistening in the sunlight, andbelow them both, five thousand feet down andsome distance beyond, was the deep cleft of theArabah, reaching southward toward the Gulf ofAkabah. We gazed enchanted, for somewhere inthe heart of this brilliant mass lay the ancient city ofPetra, about which we had read and dreamed andwere now to see with our own eyes. And here we experienced a genuine all we had read and studied, we had failedto realize that the entrance to Petra from the north. Shobek to Petra 4* was a descent, a down-hill road, into the heart ofthe great rocky mountain, and not an ascent, upsome rocky ravine, into an eagles nest of a city. The original founder of this stronghold, we nowbegan to realize, must have been a strategist of nomean powers,—a man who was not afraid to breakaway from precedent, and do an original act. Most fortified spots in the worlds history havebeen elevations, because men chose to co-operatewith nature in making her almost inaccessibleplaces perfectly safe resorts by their ingenuity andskill. We had seen many such places from thebeginning of the trip until now. Here, however,wa*s a hole in the ground, as it were, which hadproven just as efficient a protection to its inhab-itants as a hilltop could be. What a splendidlocation it was, and how thoroughly guarded bynature, will appear as we proceed. From ourstandpoint, we could only make out that some-where, out in the central portion of this tangledan
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