A FIRST SIGHT OF PETRA.

259

SKETCH XV.

PETRA. A MONOLITHIC CITY.

The Sik-Pharaoh's Treasury-The Theatre-'Saint Sulpice before Letters' Antiques in rags-Nossar-Kelb-Scheik of WadiMouça-The Farewell of Judas, and the Moment of Departure.

IT was three o'clock in the afternoon. The wadi through which we were travelling partook of the imperceptible ascent which had for several days been leading us to an extraordinary height above the leve! of the sea. As yet, nothing led us to think that we were approaching a town, and we were beginning to doubt the skill of our guides, when we found ourselves unexpectedly in the presence of a wonderful spectacle.

Beneath us lay the whole city of Petra. Mount Hor, and the mountain-chains attached to it, spread themselves out like a vision of beauty; while beyond them the white line of the desert pressed upon them, like the sea when its waters lap gigantic precipices.

Notwithstanding my moderate liking for bird's-eye views, I could not resist a feeling of intense admiration, shared by the whole caravan, for this magnificent sight. The escarped mountains of Petra are very peculiar. They are formed of a dark red earth, which is very friable, and resembles lava in a state of fusion. From the point where we were, we could not as yet distinguish the buildings or the monuments in the city; but we were able to perceive its exceptional site. This block of granite, entirely surrounded by ravines and precipices, is a natural fortress, defended by the mere form of the mountain, from which it seems to have been cut out.

Its Latin name, Petra, or 'stone,' applies perfectly to a town whose houses, temples, and monuments are nothing but blocks of the rocks, cut into, or divided from one another, by man's handiwork.

It is a monolithic city: an immense block, just calculated to tempt the Romans, who sought the curious, much more eagerly than the beautiful, in the manifestations of their power.

The enterprise which they carried through, by dint of patience and will, was no less than the cutting of an entire town out of a mountain. There, as everywhere, the objects they proposed to themselves were

the conquering of difficulties, the subduing of matter, and the braving of the elements, and they attained them, in spite of art and taste, always secondary considerations with this engineering people.

The master masons of the universe were not, however, so disinterested as they seemed to be. That they might utilise a mountain which offered such favourable conditions was not a sufficient motive to attract them across the sands of the desert their ambition and their interest overruled their love of construction; and if Petra presents an assemblage of extraordinary monuments, it is because its strategical importance justified the extravagant cost of its decoration.

Petra formed a point of junction for the Romans between the boundaries of Arabia, Egypt, and India. At an epoch at which Rome pretended to the possession of the whole world and its dependencies, it is very natural that Rome should have wished to place an advanced guard at Petra, as a rallying point between her possessions in the far East and the province of Egypt. We must look back to the epoch of Roman conquest in Asia to understand the importance of Petra in the map of the Roman dominions, and for an explanation of those strange ruins, which have

no more to do with modern, geography than the sites of Nineveh and Babylon. Gigantic remains of still greater empires and peoples, they have been respected by time, in order that history may be better able to read the past, and so enable us to touch the power of those ancient people with our hand-power and people so much loftier than our small, self-satisfied civilization can boast.

Who are the modern people who could found cities of such importance in these days? For Petra was a Roman city, which settled itself down in the East, not as a temporary immigrant, but as a lesser Rome itself, with its temples, its theatres, its forum, and its indestructible tombs. This city, lost in the desert, remained for an immense time absolutely unknown, and it is only at distant intervals that its name recurs in the history of the world. M. de Laborde has collected all the precise information respecting it which can be procured. The origin of Petra must have been long anterior to the Roman occupation; and before the existence of the monuments which are so much admired at present, the city was the capital of an important little kingdom, and a kind of central place of repair for the great nations