Title | Picturesque Palestine, Sinai, and Egypt, Vol. 2 |
Creator (LCNAF) |
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Publisher | D. Appleton and Company |
Date | 1883 |
Description | Index: Phoenicia and Lebanon / by the Rev. H. W. Jessup -- The Phoenician plain / by the Rev. Canon Tristram -- Acre, the key of Palestine, Mount Carmel and the river Kishon, Maritime cities and plains of Palestine / by Miss M. E. Rogers -- Lydda and Ramleh, Philistia / By Lt. Col. Warren -- The south country of Judaea / by the Rev. Canon Tristram -- The southern borderland and Dead Sea / by Professor Palmer -- Mount Hor and the cliffs of Edom, The convent of St. Catherine / by Miss M. E. Rogers -- Sinai / by the Rev. C. P. Clarke -- The land of Goshen, Cairo, Memphis, Thebes, Edfu and Philae / by S. Lane-Poole. |
Subject.Geographic (TGN) |
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Genre (AAT) |
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Language | English |
Type (DCMI) |
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Original Item Location | DS107 .W73 v.2 |
Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b1703789~S11 |
Digital Collection | Exotic Impressions: Views of Foreign Lands |
Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/exotic |
Repository | Kenneth Franzheim II Rare Books Room, William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library, University of Houston Libraries |
Repository URL | http://info.lib.uh.edu/about/campus-libraries-collections/william-r-jenkins-architecture-art-library |
Use and Reproduction | No Copyright - United States |
Identifier | exotic_201304_015 |
Title | Page 298 |
Format (IMT) |
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File Name | exotic_201304_015_322.jpg |
Transcript | 298 PICTURESQUE PALESTINE. From the stone circles at Wady Nisrin to a palm-grove called El Hesweh in Wady Feiran is ten or twelve miles in a straight line. A little before one reaches this, however, a certain amount of verdure appears, and low stunted tamarisks break the monotony of the foreground. Nothing can be finer than the mountain scenery of this part of the valley. The colouring of the steep sides is very beautiful, while the unexpected turnings give depth and variety of vista. Above all, Serbal is constantly to be seen rising beyond these nearer mountains through which the valley conducts one. It is just before the fertile portion of Wady Feiran is reached that one comes to a strange rock called " Hesy el Khattatin " (see page 305), surrounded by small heaps of pebbles placed upon every available stone in the immediate neighbourhood. Thus runs the legend :— " When the children of Israel had drunk of the miraculous stream which God had supplied to them from this rock, thirsty, wayworn, and ready to die, they rested here awhile and amused themselves by throwing pebbles upon the surrounding pieces of rock/' The Arabs of to-day keep up the custom, for Moses is supposed to be propitiated thereby, and any one having a sick friend thinks that if a pebble is thrown here in his name he is assured of speedy relief. Now the history in the Bible describes Israel murmuring in the Wilderness of Sin from hunger. " In Egypt," say they, " we sat by the flesh pots and we ate bread to the full. But now in this wilderness what are we to do ? You have brought us out here to kill us! " Then God gave them the quails and manna. The seventeenth chapter of Exodus commences with the journeying towards Rephidim, a place " where was no water for the people to drink." The people thirsted there for water, and murmured once more against Moses, that he had brought them and their children and their cattle out of Egypt to kill them with thirst, and they proposed to stone him and his brother. Moses cried unto the Lord, and the answer was, " Go on before the people, and take with thee of the elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thine hand, and go. Behold, I wall stand before thee there in Horeb ; and thou shalt smite the rock and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink." The scene of this murmuring is called " Massah," because they tempted the Lord, saying, " Is the Lord among us or not ? " and also " Meribah," because of the chiding of the children of Israel. The initial difficulty here is " Horeb." When Feiran, the episcopal city of the district, had perished, and Jebel Musa with its conventual establishments began to take its place in the popular estimation of sanctity, the monks felt that they must transplant the tradition of the " Stricken Rock " to their own ground. Consequently you have under the immediate shadow of Jebel Musa—the scene of the punishment of Korah, then at a little distance from the mountain you have a Rephidim pointed out, and—as being only in proper accordance with the words of the Bible-you have also a "Stricken Rock," the most famous of all the Sinaitic relics, the Rock of Moses, in the Wady Leja. In Bible usage Horeb seems to be applied to the whole district as well as to the mountain : " Thou stoodest before the Lord thy God in Horeb " (Deut. iv. 10); "Also in Horeb ye provoked the Lord to wrath" (Deut. ix. 8). The derivation of |