656, and Text pp. 565, 567, 569, 570. If the text of the passage in question (XV. 21) has not been corrupted, I can here solve the difficulty only by supposing, (what indeed lies upon the surface of the language,) that William of Tyre held Rabbah, Petra deserti, and Kerak to be all identical; confounding the ruins of Rabbah, which are near (juxta) Kerak, with those of the ancient Charac on which the fortress was erected. In the then state of geographical knowledge, and the absence of personal observation, this supposition is not improbable; especially as the writer seems to regard Crach (Charac, Kerak) merely as a modern name.

A century after William of Tyre, the confusion had naturally become still greater; for the country had now long been inaccessible to the Franks. Brocardus, in speaking of the Dead Sea, relates, that on its eastern side is pointed out a "castrum Mozera, quod olim Petra deserti vocabatur, nunc vero Crack dicitur;" this fortress, he says, was built up by king Baldwin of Jerusalem, but was now held by the Sultan. He then proceeds: “A Crack duae numerantur leucae (secundum aliud exemplar, duae diaetae) ad Areopolim, eundo versus Vulturnum, quae nunc Petra dicitur, et est metropolis totius Arabiae secundae." Brocardus c. VII. pp. 178, 179. That is to say, Petra is for the first time distinguished from Petra deserti; and Areopolis (Rabbah) lay two leagues or two days southeast of Kerak! No wonder that Marinus Sanutus thirty years later should make an advance even on all this; he in like manner distinguishes two Petras, and identifies Petra deserti with Mons Regalis or Shôbek. Describing his own map, he says, p. 246: "In quadro 53 est Ar, nunc Areopolis vel Petra. In 76 est Petra deserti, sive Mons Regalis." Comp. ib. p. 166.—It is hardly necessary to remark, that the assertions here quoted from both these writers, are totally devoid of all historical foundation.

But Raumer endeavours further to support his position, and carry back the name Petra as applied to Rabbah to a high antiquity, by adducing the doubtful passage of St. Athanasius which we have already considered (pp. 655, 656); and further, by appealing to the Onomasticon of Eusebius and Jerome, where he supposes these writers to have placed Ije-Abarim, a station of the Israelites, Num. xxi. 11. xxxiii. 44, 45, at one time near Petra and at another time near Areopolis; whence he infers the identity of these two. See the Onomast. arts. Gai and Ahie. Raumer's Paläst. p. 426. But on looking at these articles of the Onomasticon, it is obvious, that the writers either supposed themselves to be treating of two distinct places, or at least in the one case were speaking generally and indefinitely. Under Gai

(Tai,) they say it was a station of the Israelites in the desert, and in their day there was still a city called Gaia near to Petra. In the article Ahie (Air), called also Achelgai, they say nothing of its having been a station of the Israelites; but merely affirm indefinitely, that it was said to be (avrŋ déyɛrai elva) overagainst Moab, now Areopolis, towards the East. Indeed, there would be no evidence that the two names are at all to be regarded as referring to the same place, did not the form Achelgai ('Aɲɛλyuí) stand in the Sept. Num. xxi. 11. At any rate, the ground is quite too slight to build upon it a second ancient city of Petra.

The general result then of the inquiries in the present note, is the following, viz. That there was in ancient times only a single city called Petra, which is spoken of successively and sometimes indiscriminately as belonging to Edom, Arabia, and Palestine, and whose remains are still seen in Wady Musa; that to this city, whether as existing or in ruins, as Petra or as Wady Musa, Arabian writers, so far as yet known, make no allusion earlier than the 13th and 15th centuries; and that the crusaders transferred the name of Petra (Petra deserti) to Kerak, and to that place alone.-The later confused and erroneous notices of Brocardus and Marinus Sanutus, are of course not here taken into the account.

NOTE XXXVII. Pages 589, 601.

M. DE BERTOU. Bulletin de la Soc. de Geogr. Juin 1839, p. 274, seq. Oct. 1839, p. 113, seq. Abridged in the London Geogr. Journal, 1839, Vol. IX. p. 277, seq.

The statements of this traveller have been adopted, apparently without question, by Letronne; and have therefore acquired an authority, to which perhaps they would not otherwise have been entitled. For this reason, and for the sake of truth and science, I feel bound to point out several things in his account of the region of the 'Arabah, which I conceive to be erroneous; and to bring forward the grounds on which my objections rest.

We had the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with M. de Bertou, who spent an evening at our quarters in Jerusalem, immediately after his return from 'Akabah and Wady Musa. The journey to these places he had made through the 'Arabah, in company with M. Montfort, a draughtsman, and with camels and guides from the Jehâlin. He complained bitterly of his guides,—of their obstinacy, rapacity, and disobliging conduct. Three weeks afterwards, we made the same journey with camels and guides from the same tribe; indeed, with some of the very

same men; and found that they complained of the traveller in equally bitter terms. I mention this circumstance only to show, that there existed no mutual good understanding nor good-will between M. de Bertou and his guides. Whoever knows anything of the Bedawin, must be well aware, that under such circumstances, no trustworthy information is to be elicited from them. Their obstinacy manifests itself sometimes in reserve or evasion, and sometimes in a disposition to mislead. This single consideration destroys the credibility of the chief sources of oral information, to which M. de Bertou had access.

To this was added, in his case, the want of an adequate knowledge of the Arabic language. We understood that he travelled with an ordinary, illiterate interpreter; a sure source of mistake and confusion in respect to any scientific inquiry. At any rate, he was not in a situation to converse freely with his guides, so as to draw them out, and win their confidence; and least of all, could he duly cross-examine them, so as to compare the evidence of different persons, or of the same person given at different times. All this is absolutely essential, in order to extract the truth from these dark minds, especially when (as in this case) they are perverted by ill-feeling. In this respect, I was most fortunate in my companion, the Rev. Mr. Smith, whose long and familiar acquaintance with the language, and whose tact in conversing with, and managing the Arabs, I could never too highly appreciate.

The evidences of this deficiency on the part of M. de Bertou, are manifest on every page, and especially in the proper names. Thus, for example, we have Tell-El-Hard instead of Tell'Arâd, the ancient Arad; and also Mask Essdid as the name of a ruin, made up probably by confounding the two sites of ruins el-Museik and Sudeid. Esdoum (Usdum, a reminiscence of Sodom) he represents as the name which the Bedawîn give to common salt; it being (he says) synonymous with Milh! Bull. Juin, pp. 276, 277, 278. The name of Wady Hasb, he writes once Keseb, and again Caseib; Bull. Juin, p. 286. Oct. p. 127. Our acquaintance Defa' Allah, chief Sheikh of the Jehâlin, he exalts into "le grand cheikh Moussa Abou Daouk, cheikh de tous les Bedouins des montagnes d'Abraham; et son peuple divisé en trois camps, vit heureux sous ses lois!" Bull. ib. p. 276.-These are mere specimens out of a multitude; others will appear in the sequel.

Some other circumstances seem also to cast a doubt upon the accuracy, with which the traveller has recorded facts within the range of his own personal knowledge; as well as upon the extent

of his scientific preparation. To say nothing of his appeal to the Telemachus of Fenelon, as furnishing historical testimony respecting Tyre, (Lond. Geogr. Journal, Vol. IX. 1839, p. 290,) M. de Bertou, in describing at Wady Musa the architecture of the Khuzneh, has the following note; Bull. ib. p. 305, "Je n'avais pas avec moi le grand ouvrage de M. de Laborde, mais seulement une copie anglaise in -12, pour laquelle les planches ont été réduites." The English copy is a stout octavo; and no reader of this note, would hesitate to understand the writer as affirming, that he had this book with him at Wady Musa. Perhaps, however, he did not mean exactly to assert this; for the truth in the case is, that he first saw the book in our hands, at Jerusalem, after his return from Wady Mûsa. He had gone thither in 1838, as a scientific traveller, to explore and take drawings of the remains, without ever having looked at the great work of his own countryman. He spoke to us of several discoveries he had made there; but, on turning over the leaves of our English copy of Laborde, he seemed disappointed to find that the same objects had been described by that traveller, ten years before.

With a similar neglect of accuracy, M. de Bertou appears sometimes to have assigned Arabic names, where he could not well have heard them from the Arabs themselves. Thus, the name of the fountain el-Weibeh he writes el-Loubiè; although he admits in the next line, that the Arabs pronounce it el-Whébé ; Bull. ib. p. 320. Occasionally, too, he seems to me to bring forward as matters of fact, circumstances which he had observed only through the medium of a doubtful hypothesis.

I have adduced the preceding considerations, in order to show à priori, that under the circumstances in which M. de Bertou visited the great valley, it might easily happen, that some of his results should turn out not to be correct. I now proceed to specify a few things in his report, which seem to me to be thus erroneous; confining myself to such as, if not corrected, would tend to produce confusion in the geography of this remarkable region.

1. Ez-Zuweirah, on the west side of the Dead Sea, M. de Bertou holds to be the Zoar of Scripture, writing the name for that purpose 'Zoara.' Bull. 1. c. Oct. pp. 123, 131. Indeed, he rather pertinaciously insists upon this orthography, in opposition to the editor of the London Geographical Journal, (Vol. IX. p. 277,) who had given it the somewhat more correct form of 'Zoweïrah.' Irby and Mangles write it el-Zowar; Travels,

p. 351. I have elsewhere had occasion to remark, that this name has no affinity to the Hebrew Zoar (), which contains the most tenacious of all letters, 'Ain; and re-appears in Abulfeda and other Arabian writers under the form of Zoghar, with Ghain. Besides, as I have elsewhere shown, there is decisive historical evidence, that the Zoar of antiquity and of the middle ages, lay upon the east side of the Dead Sea; probably in the mouth of Wady Kerak, where the latter opens upon the isthmus of the peninsula. See Text p. 480, and Note XXXIV.

2. Of the Wady el-Jeib, the great drain of the 'Arabah towards the Dead Sea, a Wady within a Wady, M. de Bertou speaks only under the name of "Wady el Araba." Ibid. Juin, pp. 282, 285. Oct. pp. 126, 127. He appears not to have heard, or at least not to have understood, the name el-Jeib as applied to this Wady. Yet our guides were of the same tribe as his; and we had, besides, five Haweitât from near Ma'ân; and they all spoke of it day after day, both in travelling along its bed and in crossing it on our return, only as Wady el-Jeib. The same name, too, appears on Laborde's Map, and in his work; though he gives to the valley a wrong direction. Voyage p. 61. (211.)

3. To the remarkable hill or Tell of Madurah, north of 'Ain el-Weibeh, M. de Bertou gives the additional name of "Kadessa," and holds it to be the Kadesh of the South of Judah. Bull. Juin, p. 322. Not to dwell upon the fact that there is here no water, and therefore no probable site for a city, I must express my conviction, that this name "Kadessa" either rests on a mistake, or is here an invention of the writer; like his el-Loubiè for el-Weibeh, as mentioned above. Seetzen, in 1807, when in Hebron, heard much of this Tell, and of the city said to have been buried under it, and of petrified human bodies; he also travelled thither in order to examine it; but neither at Hebron, nor on the spot, did he hear any other name for it than Madūrah ; Zach's Monatl. Corresp. XVII. p. 133, seq. Lord Lindsay, also, in 1836, and Schubert in 1837, passed this way, and heard only of Madurah. See Letters on Egypt, Edom, and the Holy Land, Vol. II. p. 46. Schubert's Reise II. p. 443. But further; M. de Bertou himself told us at Jerusalem, that he had found Kadesh, and that it still bore the ancient name; and as this was to us a matter of no little interest, we of course made every inquiry, in order to ascertain the facts in the case. While encamped for a day near the Jehâlin, we questioned the chief Sheikh, and many others, on this point; but no one had ever heard of such a name. The Sheikh who had accompanied M. de Bertou, also came to