Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/118

 it less than this it is clear that it would render a slip canal impracticable except it was to be worked by locks; but for this purpose a large and constant supply of running water from some still higher source would be required, and this is not to be found in the region on either side of the great valley. I therefore regard the proposal of a ship canal in the line of the Jordan Valley, and of the Wâdy el Arabah, as impracticable from a purely physical point of view, even supposing that the political and social obstacles could be overcome.

We now commenced our preparations for a visit to Petra, the ancient capital of the Nabatheans, and to Mount Hor, the sepulchre of Aaron. No more grand monument could be erected to the memory of a man honoured of God than that which nature has here raised up. For, amidst this region of natural pyramids, Jebel Haroun towers supreme, and from its summit Aaron was doubtless enabled to look across the great valley to the hills of Judæa, which he was only to behold from afar. Thus Jehovah, in passing sentence of premature death upon his servant for a public act of disobedience, left him not to die without honour; and for ever after, the most conspicuous hill in all this country has been inseparably connected with his name, and stands as a monument to his memory.

Mount Hor is formed of reddish sandstone and conglomerate, rising in a precipitous wall of natural masonry, tier above tier, with its face to the west. The base of the cliff of sandstone rests upon a solid ridge of granite and porphyry, and the summit of the sandstone is somewhat in the form of a rude pyramid, on which is built a little white mosque, supposed to be over Aaron's tomb. This mosque was an object easily to be recognised for triangulating purposes. On the 10th December, Major Kitchener and Mr. Armstrong succeeded in planting the theodolite on the summit of the mount, and in taking several angles on other conspicuous points. The mount is flanked by two remarkable bastions of sandstone, standing erect on the granitic base, and somewhat in advance of the mural cliff's. On our way up to the entrance to the Wâdy Haroun, the gorge by which Mount Hor and Petra are approached from the west, we passed numerous flocks of sheep and goats browsing on the shrubs of the valley. We had intended to push on up the gorge, and some of our party thought that they might be able unobserved to climb Mount Hor (as had previously been done by Professor Palmer), and thus steal a march upon the inhabitants of Petra; but on approaching the entrance an obstacle presented itself which we had not expected. Our Sheikh Ali dismounted from his