which has the appearance of a broad river. This inlet is about four miles long, by the average breadth of somewhat more than one mile. The town of Suez is at its mouth, and the alleged place of passage is placed by some quite near to it, but by others about a mile above. The tides rise between five and six feet. But, although this be the average height to which the tide rises, the waters sometimes rise ten or twelve feet during tempests, when the south wind blows. When the tide is at the lowest, the gravelly beach on each side is left dry to a vast extent, and although the middle, or lowest, part of the bed is never without water, it is then fordable, and in some places may be passed dry-foot. Now the theory is, that Moses, who had long fed his flocks on the borders of the sea, was well acquainted with these facts, and availed himself of them. He led the Israelites across when the tide was low, knowing that the tide would return upon the Egyptians if they ventured to pursue,-although some allow the further benefit of one of those tempests caused by the south wind.

But, in the first place, so opportune a tempest would have been little less than a miracle by itself. According to Moses, there was the agency of a strong east wind to clear the passage: according to the theory, no wind was wanting to clear the passage; but a south wind would have been very serviceable for the opposite purpose of destroying the Egyptians. However, as it is evident that where the IIebrews crossed the simple collapse of the waters was sufficient to overwhelm the Egyptians, some anecdotes are given us to show that persons may be in danger of drowning even at this place of passage. Among others, there is one of Bonaparte, who, returning one day from the Fountains of Moses, took it into his head to shorten his route some two leagues by riding across at this place instead of going round the head of the inlet. This was at the beginning of the night; and as they were passing the tide rose so very rapidly that no attention was at first paid to it, and Napoleon and his suite were exposed to great danger. Yet all the while they were attended by natives of the neighbourhood for guides.

If this were the place where the Hebrews crossed the sea, there was no apparent need to cross it at all; and, although to a party of travellers it might be a preferable course, it could

We have marked off the following measurements on the great map [mile and a half to an inch] in the Atlas to the Descript. de l'Egypte.' Length, four miles; breadth, at Suez, three-quarters of a mile; between Suez and the alleged place of passage, one mile and a half; at the alleged place of passage, one mile; above that the average breadth is somewhat under a mile.

not be so by any means with so immense and encumbered a party as the Israelites. There was nothing, properly speaking, to compel them. For, so far from being "shut in by the wilderness," or "entangled in the land," or pent up between the mountain and the sea, there was nothing at the point of passage indicated to prevent them from taking almost any other alternative; whereas, at the valley of Bedea, no other alternatives but the passage of the sea or the return to Egypt were open, and there all the conditions apply, not one of which is applicable to Suez. It ought to be enough to say, that the passage of the gulf at that place was unnecessary. Besides, it is not likely that the host of Pharaoh would have followed there. If this passage existed at all, it must have been well known to the Egyptians. They could not have entered unknowingly, as they might have done at a passage in a new and unexpected situation; and, knowing it, they were far more likely to drive round the head of the gulf, and fall upon the Hebrews on the other side, than, for a trifling advantage, to risk the danger of the returning tide-which danger it is impossible that they should not have known. In this place, and, to a body equipped for much more rapid motion than the Hebrews could make, they had less inducement than the Israelites to pass through the sea, while their danger was much greater.

One other point cannot fail to strike us, on a little attention. The travellers and others who contend for the passage near Suez do so on the ground of the facilities which it now offers for such a transit, while, with one voice, they allow that, from conclusive appearances, it is manifest that the sea was wider and deeper at this extremity, and extended farther, than it does at present. But, if that were the case, their argument is lost; for how can they tell what extent of miracle was necessary to enable an army to pass at this place thirty-five centuries ago?-Perhaps as great as at Ain Mousa. But it is not hence to be supposed that, if the passage at Suez was wider and deeper formerly, so may the sea at Ain Mousa have been. If it were necessary we should not object to this conclusion, but the fact is, that the question of diminution only affects the northern extremity at and beyond the inlet, and not the main channel of the stream.

Much of the discussion on this subject was raised by Michaelis, who sent to Niebuhr, then in Egypt, his celebrated queries, one of which proposed to him to inquire on the spot, "Whether there were not some ridges of rock where the water was shallow, so that an army might at particular times pass over? Secondly,

whether the Etesian winds, which blow strongly all the summer from the north-west, could not blow so violently against the sea as to keep it back in a heap, so that the Israelites might have passed without a miracle."

Niebuhr answered there was no such shoal; and this it is important to know. But then he enters into the question respecting Suez, and the conclusions offered, and the tone of observation adopted, really do very little credit to that most able and upright traveller.

A copy of these questions was also left for Bruce, to join his inquiries; and his spirited and sensible answer does him very great honour.*

"I must confess, however learned the gentlemen were who proposed these doubts, I did not think they merited any attention to solve them. This passage is told us by Scripture to be a miraculous one; and, if so, we have nothing to do with natural causes. If we do not believe Moses, we need not believe the transac tion at all, seeing that it is from his authority alone we derive it. If we believe in God, that He made the sea, we must believe he could divide it when He sees proper reason; and of that He must be the only judge. It is no greater miracle to divide the Red Sea, than to divide the river Jordan.

"If the Etesian wind, blowing from the north-west in summer, could keep up the sea as a wall on the right, or to the south, of fifty feet high, still the difficulty would remain of building the wall on the left hand, or to the north. Besides, water standing in that position for a day must have lost the nature of fluid. Whence came that cohesion of particles which hindered that wall to escape at the sides? This is as great a miracle as that of Moses. If the Etesian winds had done this once, they must have repeated it many a time before and since from the same causes. Yet Diodorus Siculus, lib. iii. p. 122, says, the Troglodytes, the indigenous inhabitants of that very spot, had a tradition from father to son, from their very earliest ages, that once this division of the sea did happen there; and that, after leaving its bottom some time dry, the sea again came back, and covered it with great fury. The words of this author are of the most remarkable kind. We cannot think this heathen is writing in

favour of revelation: he knew not Moses, nor says a word about Pharaoh and his host, but records the miracle of the division of the sea in words nearly as strong as those of Moses, from the mouths of unbiassed, undesigning pagans.

"Were all these difficulties surmounted, what could we do with the pillar of fire? The answer is, We should not believe it. Why, then, believe the passage at all? We have no authority for the one, but what is for the other. It is altogether contrary to the ordinary nature of things, and, if not a miracle, it must be a fable." (p. 244-246.)

It is without any surprise, but with sincere regret, that we have seen Professor Robinson take the same view of the question, on the spot, with Niebuhr and others. We were previously prepared to feel assured that he would do so; for being acquainted with the thoroughly German education of his mind, and knowing that he had some years previously published a paper to prove from Niebuhr, Burckhardt, &c., that the Hebrew host passed the sea near Suez, we anticipated that he would be unable to see anything there likely to disturb his foregone conclusions. For these reasons we withhold from his opinion in this matter that weight which we should be quite disposed to ascribe to it on any other subject.

*

The question of route to the Red Sea is of comparatively small importance. All those who contend for the passage near Suez agree in making the Hebrews come from Egypt, and Pharaoh to pursue them by the same, or nearly the same, route as our own, as far as Adjeroud. But those who place the passage at or near the valley of Bedea, differ as to the route by which they bring them thither. Some take them through the valley of Bedea, of which route we have spoken above (p. 180). But that is not the most suitable or usual route towards Sinai, from the quarter in which the land of Goshen appears to have been situated; and we have seen that the pilgrim caravan, although it leaves at a point so much more to the south as Cairo, does not journey by this valley, but nearly by the route which we have supposed the children of Israel to have taken. Father Sicard, a Jesuit missionary, who was intimately acquainted with all the localities, in an able and ingenious article on the subject,+ suggests the only hypothesis which can supply a reason for their passing through this valley. He supposes that the "wilderness" in which the Israelites ostensibly sought to hold

In the American Biblical Repository,' 1832.

In the Mémoires des Missions de la Compagnie de Jesus au Levant,' tom. vi.

their festival, and to which Pharaoh expected them to go, lay between the valley of the Nile and the Gulf of Suez, the approach to which lay in this valley of Bedea. It was, therefore, expected that, after proceeding the requisite distance in this valley, they would turn southward into the deserts, which are at this day named the deserts of St. Anthony or of the Thebaid; and that it was when, instead of making this turn into the desert, the Hebrews went straight on through the valley to the Red Sea, that the Egyptians became convinced that they intended to escape. This is an exceed

ingly good explanation, and if we were to change the view we have taken, it would be to adopt this. Even in that case, however, we should differ from him in making Pharaoh pursue through the same valley. We observe, with surprise, that even those who bring the Israelites to the mouth of the valley of Bedea by the route which we have followed, make Pharaoh come upon them through that valley from the banks of the Nile; but this, under all the circumstances, would have been, as we have already explained (p. 180), a sort of infatuation into which he was not likely to fall.