bitants of those countries, is mentioned by Deborah in her triumphal song: "They that are delivered from the noise of archers in the place of drawing water, there shall they rehearse the righteous acts of the Lord." (Judges 5. 11.) A perfect comment on these words is furnished by an historian of the Crusades, who complains that, during the siege of Jerusalem by the Christian armies, numbers of their men were daily cut off, and their cattle driven away by the Saracens, who lay in ambush for this purpose near all the fountains and watering-places. to carry lines and buckets on their journeys, and great | cumstance, which must have been familiar to the inhaleather bottles to refill from time to time. A traveller from Egypt to Jerusalem says he did not forget "leather buckets to draw water with." And another speaks of the well at Bethlehem as a good rich cistern, deep and wide," for which reason the people who go to get water are provided with small leather buckets and a line; these are also carried by the merchants, who go through great deserts into far countries. "Coming to a well," writes Mr. Hartley, "without possessing the means of obtaining water, we were forcibly reminded of Our Lord's situation near Sychar, when the woman of Samaria said, 'Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.' She asked in astonishment, 'From whence then hast thou that living water.' Seeing that the well was deep, and Our Lord unprovided with the means of procuring any, she could not comprehend how she 'should have asked of him, and received living water;' she understood not that he spake of the spirit which they that believed on him should receive." The well at which Our Saviour held conversation with the woman of Samaria is not mentioned elsewhere. We may suppose that it took its name from the fact or notion that it was dug by Jacob, or that his family drank of its water, while journeying in this part of the country. The circumstances recorded in John 4. 5-26, as having occurred at this well, have greatly enhanced the interest of the spot to Christians, and it has hence been a favourite resort of pilgrims in all subsequent ages. The Empress Helena built a church over it, but this has long been destroyed by time and the Turks, so that the foundations only are now discoverable. The well stands about a mile from the present town; but this distance affords no objection, as the town seems to have extended farther in this direction in former times; besides which it often occurred that wells were at some distance from the town to which they belonged. This was the case in the present instance, as the disciples had gone into the city" to buy food." The well stands at the commencement of a round vale, which is thought to have been the "parcel of ground" bought by Jacob for "a hundred pieces of silver." The mouth of the well itself has over it an arched or vaulted building, and the only passage down to it is by means of a small hole in the roof, scarcely large enough for a moderate-sized person to work his way through. "Landing," says Buckingham, "on a heap of dirt and rubbish, we saw a large, flat, oblong stone, which lay almost on its edge across the mouth of the well, and left barely space enough to see that there was an opening below. We could not ascertain its diameter, but by the time of a stone's descent it was evident that it was of considerable depth, as well as that it was perfectly dry at this season, the fall of the stones giving forth a dull and dead sound." Maundrell says that its depth is thirty-five feet, and that when he was there it contained five feet of water. With respect to the identity of this well as the one at which Our Lord conversed with the woman of Samaria, Dr. Adam Clarke thinks that the spot is so distinctly marked by the evangelist, and so little liable to uncertainty from the circumstance of the well itself, and the features of the country, that even if no tradition existed for its identity, the site could hardly have been mistaken. It was near the fountains and wells that the robber commonly took his station, and, in time of war, the enemy placed their ambush, because the flocks and herds, in which the wealth of the country chiefly consisted, were twice every day collected to those places, and might be seized with less danger when the shepherds were busily engaged in drawing water. This cir ous. The passages in Scripture describing the sufferings caused by want of water in the desert, are very numer(Isai. 29. 8; Deut. 8. 15; Jerem. 2. 6, &c. &c.) Psalm 107. 5, says, "They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way, they found no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them." Baumgarten gives us a vivid description of his own and companions' suffering in the desert from want of food and water. He writes, "Travelling all that day and night, without eating, resting, or sleeping, we could not avoid falling off our camels, while we were half-sleeping, half-waking. A thousand strange dreams and fancies came into our heads whilst hungry and thirsty we sat nodding on our camels. We thought we saw somebody reaching us food and water, and putting out our hands to take it, and stretching after it when it seemed to draw back, we tumbled off our camels, and, by a severe fall, found it a dream and illusion." A. WEN, an unhealthy excrescence, generally caused by scrofulous disease. Any animal having a wen was strictly prohibited from being presented as a sacrifice to the Almighty: "Blind, or broken, or maimed, or having a wen, or scurvy, or scabbed, ye shall not offer these unto the Lord, nor make any offering by fire of them upon the altar unto the Lord." (Levit. 22. 22.) A. WHALE, ♫ than, and thannin; Gr. KŋTOS, celos, occurs in our translation. (Gen. 1. 21; Job 7. 12; and Ezek. 32. 2.) It is the largest of all the inhabitants of the water. Profane authors have given extravagant accounts of the size of this creature: some say that whales have been seen of six hundred feet long and three hundred and fifty feet thick; others write that there have been seen some of eight hundred feet long. Modern writers say that, in America, some whales measure ninety or a hundred feet from head to tail; and it is admitted that the whales in the north seas are yet larger than those that are found upon the coast of Guinea, or in the Mediterranean. The whale brings forth her young ones alive, as other perfect animals, but produces one or two at most, and nourishes it at the breast with great care. Whales have generally no teeth, but only beards or whiskers on the throat, of about a span in breadth, and fifteen feet long, which ends in fringes, like hog's bristles at the end, which, at top, are set in the palate, and ranged in order. These beards serve to extend or contract the cheeks of this creature. Whales are maintained by a water, or froth, which they suck from the sea, and by some little fishes, as the sea-flea, the sea-spider, anchovies, seaweed, &e. Yet some of them have teeth, and in their stomachs have been found thirty or forty cod fish. The whale always keeps its young one under its fins, and never leaves it until it is weaned. It has no udder, but has nipples and teats, which contain milk in such abundance, that sometimes there have been drawn from it to the quantity of two hogsheads. WHALE It is well ascertained that the writers of the Bible must have been ignorant of this animal; it is never seen near Jerusalem or Egypt, and they could have no history of Greenland or Spitzbergen. The Rev. James they doubtless carried bread-corn; seating themselves first in the most favourable climates. A few months sufficed the yet virgin earth to produce the crops; and even the tribes who followed a pastoral life, and removed from time to time, for the convenience of their flocks and herds, rested while they sowed their grain and gathered in their sheaves. Indeed, many of the wander continue this practice. The most ancient sacred and profane books describe Egypt as a country abounding in wheat. Owing to the Hurdis, in a dissertation written expressly for the purpose, has endeavoured to prove that the crocodile, and not the whale, is spoken of in Genesis 1. 21. We quote his concluding argument. "There yet remains an arguing tribes of the desert both in Asia and Africa still ment which proves that the crocodile, and not the whale, is to be understoed in Genesis 1. 21. At whatever time Moses wrote the Book of Genesis, whether before or❘ after the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, to assure them that the Lord their God was the creator of crocodile, has a manifest propriety which is not to be found in the present translation. For he might naturally suppose, should they incline to idolatry, one of the first objects of their adoration would be the crocodile which they had seen worshipped in Egypt." Dr. Geddes thinks that the circumstance of its being an Egyptian divinity might induce the historian to particularise it, as being but a mere creature like the rest. The word in Job. 7. 12 must also mean the crocodile. It describes some terrible animal, which, but for the watchful care of Divine Providence, would be very destructive. Our translators render it dragon in Isaiah 27. 1, where the prophet gives this name to the king of Egypt: "He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea." The sea there is the river Nile, and the dragon the crocodile. (Compare Ezekiel 32. 2.) tannin, is On this passage Bochart remarks the not a whale, as people imagine, for a whale has neither feet nor scales, nor is it to be found in the rivers of Egypt, nor does it ascend therefrom upon the land; nor is it taken in the meshes of a net; all of these properties are ascribed by Ezekiel to the tannin of Egypt. Whence it is plain that it is not a whale that is here spoken of, but a crocodile. Merrick supposes David in Psalm 74. 13 to speak of the tunnie, a kind of whale, with which he was probably acquainted: and Bochart thinks it has its Greek name thunnos from the Hebrew thunot. The last-mentioned fish is undoubtedly that spoken of in Psalm 104. 6. The word "whale" occurs in the translations of Ecclesiasticus 43. 25; and in the Song of the Three Children, 5. 57, in both which the Greek word is used. (See JONAH.) A. WHEAT, П chetch, σitos, sitos, the principal and most valuable kind of grain for the service of man. Nothing certain about the original country of the wheat is known: Sicily, Siberia, and Persia, have been, in their turn, pointed out as claimants, but without any unequivocal evidence. If we were to suggest Egypt as the birth-place of the wheat we should not, perhaps, be far from the truth. Wheat would seem to have been native to the western and central parts of Asia, whence it was early spread over the greater part of the old world, by the migratory habits of the patriarchs of mankind, and is first mentioned in Scripture in the account of Jacob's sojourn with his father-in-law, Laban. (Gen. 30.14.) The country of Laban, Padan Aram, was the northern portion of Mesopotamia; one of those elevated plains to the southward of Caucasus, whence the Tigris and Euphrates take their sources, where cities were already built, nations had become stationary, and the plains were covered with cultivated grain. To this day it is in those lands that bread-corn is found wild, though the cities are decayed, and only serve as strong places for the fierce tribes who have long spoiled the land. Whithersoever the first who departed from the original hive of man, to form fixed settlements, wandered, Wheat. annual inundation of the Nile, it was less subject to variations in produce than the neighbouring countries, where the harvests often failed from continued drought. It is generally admitted that to Egypt or some of her colonies, Greece, and probably both Sicily and Italy, owe their bread-corn. The Israelites while wandering in the desert were not without wheat. Though suffering from occasional scarcity, yet when the tabernacle was erected, and the ark of the covenant framed, fine wheaten flour was produced in abundance for the sacred services; the offering of righteous Abel, the first-fruits of the earth being thus continued for a memorial. In the 2d chapter of Leviticus, directions are given for oblations, which in our translations are called "meat-offerings," but as meat means flesh, and all kinds of offerings there specified were made of wheat, it would have been better to have rendered it wheaten-offerings. Calmet has observed that there were five kinds of these: simple flour, oven cakes, cakes of the fire-plate, cakes of the frying-pan, and green ears of corn. Besides those passages in Scripture where the specific word wheat is used, Celsius would fain consider all those where corn is named as implying wheat, and also those in which parched or dried corn is found. The long and learned dissertation in the Hierobotanicon on the general word corn goes to prove from ancient writers, sacred and profane, that it always meant bread-corn, that is, wheat. We must remember that the Jews used a great deal of barley bread. We find, for instance, that barley bread was presented to David for his own use and that of his army, and who can forget the barley loaves of the New Testament? Bread was also made of rye and of spelt or zea, especially in Egypt, as we may infer from Scripture, and as Herodotus positively asserts. Therefore, perhaps, the general name corn is the best possible translation of the passages in question. With regard to the parched corn, if the traditional use of any species of grain goes for anything, there are few modes of eating the first ears more common in the East, even now, than roasting or parching it before the fire. An expression in Proverbs informs us that wheat was sometimes mixed with inferior grain. "Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him," (Prov. 27. 22,) a comparison taken no doubt from the common custom. We know from Pliny that both the Greeks and Italians of his day mixed many varieties of grain with their wheat, some with the idea of increasing its wholesomeness, and others for the sake of the flavour. From Scripture we may infer that barley formed the chief bread of the labourers, mixed probably with rye and spelt. Among the many temporal blessings promised to the Israelites in the land of promise was, that they should have " a land of wheat and barley, a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness." (Deut. 8. 8,9.) That this was the case there is ample evidence in Scripture. Densely populated as the country ultimately became, and various as were its productions, it not only furnished corn enough for its own inhabitants, but had a surplus, which they disposed of to the Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon, who themselves paid too much attention to commerce and arts to take much interest in agriculture. It is to be regretted that we do not know whether the corn was supplied to them merely for their own use, or for exportation also. The latter, which is very probable, would still more show the great productiveness of the country in grain. (See Ezek. 27. 7, and Acts 12. 20.) Even at present much corn is annually exported from Jaffa to Constantinople. The large surplus produce is indicated by many other circumstances, among which we may mention Solomon's contract with the king of Tyre for the building of the Temple, by which the Hebrew king was to pay the Phoenician annually twenty thousand measures of wheat for food to his household, (Kings 5. 11,) with the like quantity, besides an equal number of measures of barley, to the Tyrian hewers that cut wood in Lebanon. Returns of sixty and a hundred fold to the cultivator seem, in the Scriptures, to be mentioned as not unusual, (see Gen. 26. 12; Matt. 13. 8;) and even now, wherever wheat is sown, if rain does not fail, it richly repays the cultivator, growing to the height of a man. But the thinness of the population, the disturbed state of the country, and the oppression to which the cultivator is exposed from the Turk on the one hand, and the Arab on the other, all concur to prevent the remaining capabilities of this naturally rich soil from being fairly tested in this or any other branch of agriculture. The wheat usually grown in Palestine was precisely that we see covering our own corn lands for the most part, but it would seem that in the southern part of Jewry, as in Egypt, the Triticum compositum, or many-headed wheat, was and is still cultivated. (See engraving "Wheat of Heshbon," article AGRICULTURE.) The laws of Moses directed very liberal treatment of the poor at the seasons of harvest and ingathering. The corners of the fields were not to be reaped, the owner was not to glean his own field, and a sheaf accidentally left in the field was not to be fetched away, but left for the poor. There are equally liberal regulations respecting vine-yards and olive-yards. (See the laws in Leviticus 19. 9,10, and Deuteronomy 24. 19,21.) The harvest was always a season of rejoicing and gratitude. In our Protestant country the harvest home has been quite a secular feast. The first handful reaped was called the maiden, this was saved and carried in triumph with the last wain-load to the barns, while the "shout | ing for the summer fruits and the harvest," (Isai. 16. 89,) filled the air with sounds of rejoicing. A Hindoo of our time lays apart the few first grains of his scanty meal for his gods; and the Greeks of Homer offered no bullock without the salted barley. Wheat, and the bread made from it, accompanied by salt, were, by the express commands of the Mosaic law, offered before the Lord by the Hebrews in grateful acknowledgment for their first of temporal blessings. Nor did even the heathen neglect a like expression of gratitude. Whether the religion were founded on the mystic dreams of Bhood or Brahma, the allegories of Egypt, or the poetry of Greece, corn was indispensable in all sacrifices to their gods, or to the spirits of their ancestors. A. WHEEL, WHEELS. It would appear that the Egyptians, at least in the earlier ages, were ignorant of the use of iron, for all the implements not formed of gold and silver are painted green, and must manifestly have been made of brass. We need not remind our classical readers, that all the weapons mentioned by Homer are said to have been formed of this metal. Casting must have been carried to a high degree of perfection, for most, if not all the frames of the warchariots are brazen, a circumstance proved not only by their green colour, but by the lightness and neatness of their wheels, and their beautiful ornaments, too elaborate to have been carved. We find that the wheels under the brazen laver in Solomon's temple were cast; they are thus described by the sacred historian: "And the work of the wheels was like the work of a chariotwheel; their axletrees, and their naves, and their felloes, and their spokes, were all molten." (1Kings 7. 33.) Swords, quivers, knives, axes, and adzes, were all formed from the same material. As there were no mines in Egypt, it seems probable that the great quantity of metal required in the arts was obtained from the interior of Africa. Copper in hardness, bears the same proportion to iron of about eight to nine, and was therefore not very inferior to it before the art of forming the latter into steel was discovered. The monuments clearly show us, that iron, although known, was very little used in the flourishing days of the Pharaohs; and this circumstance tends strongly to demonstrate the antiquity of the Pentateuch, and, consequently, its authenticity as a contemporary document, when we find, that invariably the metals described as employed for use or ornament, are those only which appear on the ancient monuments of Egypt. Thus Bezaleel is said to have been instructed, "to devise cunning works, to work in gold, in silver, and in brass." (Exod. 31. 4.) It may be necessary to add, that in Hebrew, the same word signifies both brass and copper. Our translators invariably use the former even when the native copper is intended. From the brief mention of the mode in which metals were obtained in the Book of Job, it seems probable, that the art of smelting iron ore was unknown, and that this metal was only used when found in a nearly pure state, which it occasionally is; the smelting of copper ore is expressly mentioned by the patriarch, and, also, the refining of gold and silver. "Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold, where they fine it. Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone." (Job 28. 1,2.) The account given of the structure of the tabernacle proves that metallurgy must have been well understood in the days of Moses, and from the description of the golden calf, we may infer that the casting of idols and statues was no uncommon practice. The prophet Ezekiel's vision of the wheels demands WHEELS some remark. (See Ezek. 1. 15,16,19-21.) "Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces. The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the colour of a beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up. Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. When those went, these went; and when those stood, these stood; and when those were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels." This vision of Ezekiel has always been regarded both by Jews and Christians, as very abstruse and difficult of interpretation, so much so, indeed, that the former anciently forbade it to be read by persons under thirty years of age. Bush observes, "From all that we can gather of the form of these wheels they appear to have been spherical, or each composed of two of equal size, and inserted the Egyptian Wheels. Nahum 2. 12.) The rage of a female bear when her young have been killed or taken from her has been often noticed, and forms the subject of many interesting anecdotes in voyages and travels. There do not indeed seem to be any animals which more strongly than the bear, manifest that attachment to their young which the wise providence of God has implanted with various, degrees of intensity in most brute creatures. In the narrative of Lord Mulgrave's voyage for the discovery of a north-west passage, there is a touching story of a bear whose young had been shot from the ship. Though herself wounded, she scorned to withdraw and leave her young behind; she would not understand that they were dead; she placed meat before them, and by every endearing motion solicited them to eat; she endeavoured to raise them with her paws; she withdrew and looked back as expecting them to follow, but seeing that they lay motionless, she returned, and with inexpressible fondness walked round them, pawed them, licking their wounds, and moaning bitterly the while. "It would," says the narrator, "have drawn tears of compassion from the eyes of any but those who possessed hearts of adamant, to observe the affectionate concern of this poor beast." At last, as if receiving the unwilling conviction that her young were dead indeed, she turned towards the ship, and uttered a fierce and bitter growl against the murderers, which they answered by a volley of shot that laid her dead beside her young. So fine a trait in the character of the bear might well be noticed by the sacred writers. It is said, that the attachment between the dam and her young is reciprocal, and that no circumstance of danger or alarm can drive the latter from their dead or living mother. A. The punishment of the bastinado is now the most common in Oriental countries. See BASTINADO. Various materials were used in the manufacture of WHIP, WHIPS. In ancient times, whips were used not only for driving animals, but also as instruments: of torture, and even now in slave-holding countries, the unfortunate slaves are obliged to work with the fear of the whip before their eyes. The system of administering rim of the one into that of the other at right angles, and personal chastisement has been, and is universal throughso consisting of four equal parts or half circles. They out the East: and under despotic governments, no were accordingly adapted to run either forward or back-person can be sure of escaping, as punishment is inflicted ward, to the right hand or to the left, without any on the mere caprice of any tyrant who may happen to lateral turning, and by this means, their motion correbe in power. sponded with that of the four faces of the living creatures to which they were attached. 'When they went upon their four sides they turned not as they went,' Heb. 'When they went, they went upon the quarter-part of their fourfoldness,' i. e., upon or in the direction of one of the four vertical semicircles into which they were divided, and which looked towards the four points of the compass. When it is said, 'they turned not,' it is not to be understood that they had not a revolving or rotary motion, but that they, like the faces, never forsook a straight-forward course." Of verses 19 and 20, the same author observes, "These circumstances are doubtless dwelt upon with peculiar emphasis, in order to show the intimacy of relation and harmony of action subsisting between the living creatures and the wheels, or more properly, between the things symbolically represented by them." (See arts. CHARIOT, ARMS, ARMOUR, &c.) A. WHELP, WHELPS, is the name usually given to the young of lions and tigers, and all animals of the feline species. In the sacred writings the same expression is often extended to the young of bears, and the rage of a bear robbed of her whelps has become quite a proverb. (See 2Sam. 17. 18; Prov. 17. 12; Ezek. 19. 2; Hosea 13. 8; Egyptian Whips. whips. In 1Kings 12. 11, Rehoboam says, "My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions." Here a simple scourge and another more painful are mentioned in opposition. The latter is called "a scorpion," and probably means to denote a comparison between the pain respectively occasioned by the scourge and the reptile. The Rabbins think generally, that this scorpion was a scourge composed of knotted and thorny twigs, by which the flesh was severely lacerated. More probably it consisted of thongs set with thorns or sharp iron points. Such scourges were known to the Romans as a means of torturing used by unrelenting persons, and particularly by masters in the punishment of their slaves. Some of the early martyrs were thus tortured. Few travellers have visited Egypt without commisserating the condition of the unhappy Fellahs; every public work is executed by their unpaid labour: halfnaked and half-starved, they toil under a burning sun, to clear out canals or level roads, under the eyes of taskmasters ready to punish with their formidable whips, made from the hide of the hippopotamus, the least neglect or relaxation. Such a sight necessarily calls to mind the sufferings endured by the Israelites while they were subjected to the tyranny of Pharaoh. "The Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour; and they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field; all their service wherein they made them serve was with rigour." (Exod. 1. 13,14.) The Egyptian warriors used a whip, consisting of a smooth round wooden handle, with either one or two thongs. This whip was generally used in preference to the goad in driving cattle. The ox-goad was, however, more commonly used in Palestine, for we read of "Shamgar, the son of Anath, which slew of the Philistines six hundred men with an ox-goad; and he also delivered Israel." (Judges 3. 31.) The whip appears to have been heavier than that used in modern times, from the manner in which it is mentioned in the Book of Proverbs: "A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back." (Prov. 26. 3.) When the chariot contained but one person, the whip was usually fastened to the hand with a thong. We find an example of the great importance of the whip in the chariot races which formed part of the games at the funeral of Patroclus: First flew Eumelus on Pheretrian steeds; Strikes from his hand the whip, and renders vain Iliad xxiii. The conclusion of the race is very descriptive of some spirited representations of the great Sesostris on the monuments of Egypt urging forward his noble steeds at the very top of their speed: Thundering near charioteers to crack their whips, in order to increase the terror of the enemy. We find an allusion to this practice in the prophet Nahum's description of the destruction of Nineveh: "The noise of a whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels, and of the prancing horses, and of the jumping chariots. The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear; and there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcases; and there is none end of their corpses; they stumble upon their corpses." (Nahum 3. 2,3.) A. WHIRLWIND. A wind which rises suddenly from almost every point, is exceedingly impetuous and rapid, and imparts a whirling motion to dust, sand, water, and occasionally to bodies of great weight and bulk, carrying them either upwards or downwards, and scattering them about in different directions. Whirlwinds and water-spouts are supposed to proceed from the same cause; their only difference being, that the latter pass over the water, and the former over the land. Both of them have a progressive as well as a | circular motion, generally rise after calms, and occur most frequently in warm latitudes. The wind blows in every direction from a large surrounding space, both towards the water-spout and the whirlwind; and a water-spout has been known to pass in its progressive motion from sea to land, and when it has reached the latter, to produce all the phenomena and effects of a whirlwind. There is no doubt, therefore, of their arising from a similar cause, as they are both explicable on the same principles. A shower of rain in the East is often preceded by a whirlwind, which darkens the sky with immense clouds of sand from the loose surface of the desert. To this common phenomenon, the prophet alludes in his direction to the king of Israel, who was marching with his army against Moab, and was ready to perish in the wilderness for want of water. "Thus saith the Lord, Make this valley full of ditches. For thus saith the Lord, Ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye see rain; yet that valley shall be filled with water, that ye may drink, both ye and your cattle, and your beasts." If a squall had not commonly preceded rain, the prophet would not have said "ye shall not see wind." The whirlwind, it appears from the sacred writings, came from different points of the compass. Daniel (7.2,) in his vision, says, "I saw in my vision by night, and behold the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea;" and the prophet Ezekiel speaks of one that came from the north, and although it appeared to him in vision, it was according to the course of nature; for we learn from other sources of information, that it sometimes arises in that quarter. William of Tyre records an instance of a violent whirlwind from the north, in the time of the crusades, which enveloped two hostile armies in an immense cloud of dust, and compelled them for a while to suspend the work of destruction. When that enterprising traveller, Mr. Park, was traversing the Sahara, or Great Desert, in his way to the Niger, destitute of provisions and water, his throat pained with thirst, and his strength nearly exhausted, he heard a wind sounding from the east, and instinctively opened his parched mouth to receive the precious drops of rain, which he confidently expected, but it was instantly filled with sand drifted from the desert. So immense was the quantity raised into the air and wafted upon the wings of the wind, and so great the velocity with which it flew, that he was compelled to turn his face to the west to prevent suffocation, and to continue When the war cars charged, it was the custom of the motionless till it passed. In Persia, violent currents of Drives through a stream of dust the charioteer, Iliad xxiii. |