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of imagination to suppose Amadia a favorite resort of Nimrod, the mighty hunter.

Near the top of the ascent we passed a beautiful spring, which supplies the town, the water being carried into it by skins. We entered the town through a natural break in the cliff, by a strong gateway of beautifully hewn stone, with iron sheeted doors. The even plane of the town is about three fourths of a mile in diameter. The northern half is covered with buildings and ruins, and the rest is a grassy plot, mostly covered with a great graveyard, and a fort on the southern brink of the cliff. The town is still much in ruins, having been taken and sacked by the famous Mohammed Pasha of Ravendooz, and more recently having been besieged and subdued by the Turks. It is naturally very strong; yet it may be so readily commanded from the mountain side, the plane of the town being on a level with the top of the natural wall, or rocky rim or hoop, that it cannot stand before ordnance, though so impregnable to the weapons of ancient warfare, or small arms.

The valley had gradually narrowed as we proceeded from the west; but it stretched still far to the eastward of the town, running into broken ranges, which send their waters on toward the Zab.

There are now in Amadia only about two hundred families, where there were formerly fifteen hundred. Sixty of these two hundred families are Jews, who speak the Syriac. A company of Turkish soldiers are there to guard the town and aid in governing the district. Amadia has no bazaar worthy of the name, though that name is applied to a few shabby shops among the ruins.

We lodged at the house of Kasha Mando, a Nestorian priest. He was himself at the village of Davia (Monastery) or Mar Abd Esho, three miles from the town, where he spends the summer. There are in the town only twenty Nestorian families. In the district there are many villages of Nestorians, most of whom have been converted by Papists. Priest Mando came towards evening. He was a pleasant, intelligent man, about fifty years old. He told us that formerly there were one hundred Nestorian families in Amadia, four fifths of whom have scattered. He related to us, in a graphic manner, the circumstances of the capture of the town by the Turks, a few years before, from the rebellious Koords; how the balls and bombs suddenly came rattling down upon the houses, most terrifically, in a manner altogether new and strange in these regions.

There is a mosque in Amadia, which has a very tall minaret of hewn stone, of almost unequalled beauty of structure and proportions. Tradition says that it was built two hundred years ago, by an Armenian, who was so perfect a workman that the Koordish chief of the town ordered his hands to be cut off when he had finished this structure, that he might never build another elsewhere, to rival it.

May 29. We passed over the plain of Amadia, and followed the cliff

half around the fortress. We found the graveyards to be of great extent -quite as large as the inhabited part of the town - which would indicate its antiquity. The waters of the Zab are visible from Amadia, about twelve miles to the southeast. The trees and grassy patches in the cultivated dales below appeared very beautiful as viewed from the rocky height.

Priest Mando had quite a collection of ancient Syriac manuscripts. We were anxious to purchase a Baet Mootwee (a portion of the Old Testament) to aid us in preparing a copy for the press; but he declared that he would much sooner part with his head than the book; and no importunity on the part of our helpers could induce him to change his decision. When told that we only wished it to aid us in printing correct copies of the scriptures, he said: "Our people would not hear us read from one of your printed copies; they would say: 'these are not the books of our fathers, and will lead us astray.""

Toward evening we walked out and sat down among the ruins on the brink of the rocky rampart. Within a few feet of us was a tank cut into the solid rock, perhaps a hundred feet deep, as a reservoir of rain water, to provide for the contingency of a seige, when the springs without would be inaccessible. Nature seems to have formed this remarkable place for stormy scenes and bloody men; and art has somewhat improved on nature's work. None but an ardent mountaineer could describe, as priest Mando • did, the falling and bursting bombs, among families and social circles, when the town was in a state of seige.

In wide contrast with our associations of war and blood, suggested by the ruins and the rampart, lay the sweet, smiling dell, on the stream far below us, filled with thrifty walnut and many other trees, and skirted by little cultivated patches, spreading out a miniature paradise of rural simplicity and quiet, and presenting, by the side of the frowning height on which we sat, a striking peace scene. Our eyes also wandered over the almost endless succession of ridges and ravines, looming, like vast furrows, across the valley, westward far toward the Tigris, now strikingly contrasting bright sunny streaks with alternate shade, under the last rays of the setting sun; the varied shapes of those ridges and ravines also presenting myriads of diamond forms, and different hues, from the emerald grass and trees, to white, bare earth, brown sterile rock, and vermilion sandstone the whole being an assemblage of nature's freaks on a magnificent scale, such as I had never seen before, and all the more interesting as associated with this primitive land.

May 30. We went out three miles to the east of Amadia, to the village and ancient church of Mar Abd Esho, which has long been considered a Christian appendage to the town. We crossed the deep ravine that sweeps around the town on the north, by a natural, level, rocky pass, a few feet wide a remarkable formation, as though struck out by the Creator's hand, on purpose for a highway from the lofty fortress to the country, VOL. XXII. No. 85.

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without descending and again ascending through the deep ravine. Our road led along the foot of the great mountain range. The village and church of Mar Abd Esho (Saint Servant of Christ), is situated in a narrow ravine in the base of the mountain, which is filled with trees, many of the walnuts being very large. There were also clusters of fig-trees and pomegranates, and grape-vines fantastically climbing the tallest walnuts. Among the trees, which form an almost continuous forest, are small terraced gardens, rising successively from the fields far below; and cool springs of the finest water were gushing from beneath the rocks. At the head of the village is the church of Mar Abd Esho. From every appearance, we judged it to be the oldest Nestorian church we had seen. Priest Mando told us, that in one of their ancient books its date is recorded, which runs back three hundred and sixty years before Mohammed. We are not of course fully prepared to endorse that date. The church consists of three successive arched chapels, each of considerable size, separated by walls of vast thickness and strength. There is a communication between these chapels by wide doors.

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Mar Abd Esho was in former times a monastery. The steep cliff above the village, is full of natural cells, of various forms and sizes, some of them possessing almost the regularity of rooms, with door and chimney. They are now occupied by the villagers as stables- a much better appropriation of them than when tenanted by the choir monks of bygone ages. Yet, could they speak, what a chapter of church history might these venerable cliffs reveal. We inquired of priest Mando how long it is since this place was occupied as a monastery. He replied, that nobody knows; but that there was a New Testament, written on parchment, taken from the church by Mr. Kanaw, British consul at Mosul, which purports to have been written by a monk of Mar Abd Esho six hundred years ago.

Our mission have now a young Nestorian preacher stationed in the town of Amadia, and another in this village of the monastery, Mar Abd Esho, and members of our mission frequently visit these ancient localities. Thus in the beautiful figure of an oriental Christian, while the natural light rises from the East, spiritual light, in this age, comes from the West.

2. LETTER FROM REV. GEORGE C. HURTER, Beirût, Syria, May, 23,

1863.

Having recently returned from a visit to Mount Sinai, I thought you would be interested in the discovery of a spring of water under the east side of Mount Horeb, which I cannot learn has been noticed by any traveller who has written on Sinai; but which is so striking that had it been seen, it would certainly have been mentioned. Travellers generally go to the convent and lodge there during their sojourn at Sinai, and those who prefer to remain outside the convent pitch their tents on the usual camping

ground at the entrance of Wady Shu'eib, and near the east side of the Wady, under, or close by, a little hill, where we also encamped. Travellers almost always take dragomen with them, and never attend to the supply of water for the prosecution of their journey. Not having a dragoman with us, we had to attend to the filling of the barrels ourselves. In coming towards Mount Horeb we took the road followed by Dr. Robinson by the Wady er-Rahah. On page 89 of the first volume of his Rersearches he says: "On the left of Horeb, a deep and narrow valley runs up S. S. E. between lofty walls of rock, as if in continuation of the S. E. of the plain. In this valley, at the distance of nearly a mile from the plain, stands the convent." On the east side of this valley is a small hill separated from the mountain by a road about one hundred feet across, which travellers follow in going to the convent from Wady es-Sheikh; while those who go to the convent by Wady er-Râhah pass on the west side of the hill. On the south side of this hill is the camping ground, and in getting to it we made a short circuit of five minutes ride to avoid a precipitous bank. On arriving at our camping ground, we requested our camel-drivers, before dispersing to their homes, to fill our barrels with water. They said they would take two of them to a spring where there was a reservoir in which they would place them. They pointed out to us the direction on the west side of the valley under Horeb, and we perceived a few trees at that place. Towards evening I told my party that I would go and see whether they had filled and sunk the barrels in the pool. The direction of the spring was straight across the valley from the camping ground. After leaving the tents, in about two minutes I ascended the ground where we made the circuit, then passed down a slight declivity, after which the ground gradually rose until I reached the spring, in about ten minutes, by a rugged path, over large boulders of Sinaite granite. Here I was surprised to find a fine spring of pure water issuing from a rent in the rock; the rent was in an oblique direction, the highest part of it on the left, and sloping down towards the right. The lowest part of the fissure was as high as a man's head from the ground. The surrounding rock is the solid red granite of Sinai, smooth on its face and unbroken by fissure or seam. The fissure is about six feet long, about four inches wide, five inches deep at the bottom and twelve at the top, and runs down into the rock parallel with the perpendicular side of the mountain; the water seems to issue about two feet above the bottom of the rent, flowing over the lowest part of it in a stream about the thickness of a man's finger. The reservoir is about twelve feet long by five feet in width, and four feet deep, and was nearly full when I reached the place. When full the water is let off to irrigate some twenty or more fruit trees. As I was the first (as far as I am aware) to observe this singular "rent" in the "Rock of Horeb," and am unable to find any allusion to it in the books of Burckhardt, Robinson, Stanley, or other travellers, I have thought it my duty to inform the public of the fact, in order that

Could we suppose that Moses had

future travellers may not fail to see it. a rod about six feet long, and that, raising the dower end of it as high as his head, he struck it obliquely against the granite cliff, and that a wedge-shaped cavity was thus miraculously formed, this rent would meet the conditions exactly.

ARTICLE VIII.

NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

LEWIN'S SIEGE OF JERUSALEM.

THE Siege of Jerusalem by Titus, is the title of a recent contribution toward the topography of the ancient city, an octavo of five hundred pages, from the pen of Thomas Lewin, Esq., M. A., of Trinity College, Oxford.' The volume is composed of three distinct parts. The first one hundred pages describe, in a graphic and spirited manner, the siege of the city by Titus, giving in the form of a regular and compact narrative, all the salient points of the story as told by Josephus, and guarding against the exaggerations into which the Jewish historian was betrayed through his flattery of Titus on the one hand, and upon the other, by his animosity toward certain leaders among his own countrymen. Mr. Lewin has succeeded in throwing about one of the most familiar, and even hackneyed, events of history a freshness and reality, that secures at once the attention of the reader, and sustains it to the end. We object, however, to the importance which he ascribes to the works of Josephus as collateral evidence for the Christian history.

"For the halo of light which the Wars and Antiquities have thrown upon the Christian religion we ought to be deeply grateful. Had these works not come down to us, what a cloud of darkness would have hung over the birth and rise of Christianity!" But why so? The birth and rise of Christianity are recorded in the four Gospels and in the book of Acts by historians who, to say the least, are as trustworthy as Josephus; and the comparison of these books with the Old Testament well illustrates the connection of Christianity with Judaism. By every fair canon of historical criticism, Luke should be accepted as an authority for the rise of Christianity, though unsustained, and even contradicted, by a hostile

1 London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green.

2 Page 6.

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