CHAPTER X.
THE WÂDY EL ARABAH.
The Wâdy el Arabah, which we were now about to traverse, is by far the largest and most striking depression in Arabia Petræa. It is called in the Bible “the Wilderness of Zin,” and was traversed by the children of Israel throughout a large portion of its extent; first, according to the views of some authors, when going up to Kadesh Barnea to take possession of the Promised Land, and afterwards, when disastrously driven back before their enemies, and doomed to wander in the great desert of Arabia during a space of nearly forty years. They retraced their steps, again, at the end of thirty-eight years, on the second visit to Kadesh Barnea, and before the encampment in the plain at the western base of Mount Hor, where Aaron died; and lastly, when obliged to circumvent Edom and Moab, on their way to the Promised Land by the Jordan Valley.
The great valley of the Arabah was first brought to the notice of Europeans by Robinson and Burckhardt,[1] who traced up the course of the valley from the Gulf of Akabah to the Lake Asphaltites. But it has also been visited and described to a greater or less extent by subsequent explorers, amongst whom may be mentioned Laborde, Lord Lindsay, Dean Stanley, Dr. Wilson, Professor Palmer, and, more recently, M. Vignes, in connection with the expedition carried out by the Due de Luynes.[2] These travellers have shown that this valley is the physical prolongation of that great depression which, commencing at the north with the valleys of the Litany and the Orontis, stretches southwards along the course of the Jordan, the Salt Sea, and The Ghôr, through the El Arabah itself into the Gulf of Akabah; — a depression justly pronounced by Humboldt to be the most remarkable on the face of the earth. This physical continuity is, as
