ART III.1. Biblical Researches in Palestine, and in the Adjacent Regions. A Journal of Travels by E. Robinson and E. Smith. In three volumes. Vols. I. and II. Journal in 1838. Vol. III. Later Researches in 1852. Drawn up from the Original Diaries, with Historical Illustrations, by EDWARD ROBINSON, D. D., LL. D. With new Maps and Plans. Boston: Crocker and Brewster. 1856. 2. Sinai and Palestine in Connection with their History. By ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, M. A., Canon of Canterbury. With Maps and Plans. London: John Murray. New York: J. S. Redfield. 1856.

3. Phænicia. By JOHN KENRICK, M. A. London: B. Fellowes.

4. Karte von Syrien und Palästina. Zu RITTER'S Erdkunde, von CARL ZIMMERMANN. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. 5. Reise nach Ostindien über Palästina und Egypten von Juli, 1844, bis April, 1853. Von K. GRAUL. Leipzig. 1854. 6. DR. TITUS TOBLER'S Zwei Bücher Topographie von Jerusalem und seinen Umgebungen. Berlin: Georg Reimer. 7. Five Years in Damascus. By Rev. J. L. Porter, A. M., F.R. S. L. In two volumes. London: John Murray. 1855. 8. Palestine. Description Géographique, Historique, et Archéologique. Par S. MUNK. Paris: Firmin Didot Frères. 9. Cartes de la Terre-Sainte: Atlas Universel. Par HouzÉ. Paris.

10. The Chronological Scripture Atlas. London: Bagster and Sons.

11. Map of Jerusalem and its Environs. By J. T. BARCLAY and Sons. Philadelphia: James Challer.

12. Neue Hand-Atlas üb. alle Theile der Erde. Berlin: H. Kiepert.

13. Geognostische Karte des peträischen Arabien. Wien: Joseph Russegger.

MAPS are an essential auxiliary to the study of history. The difference between correctly rendering Xenophon's narrative of the Expedition of Cyrus and rightly conceiving of that marvel of strategy, the catabasis of the Ten Thousand, is the differ

ence between measuring off parasangs of unknown wastes and interminable marshes, and making a journey over a diversified and exciting region in the company of an intelligent and observing traveller, who remarks all the features and incidents of the way, while he notes carefully its times and distances; in other words, the difference between a lesson in grammar and a study in history. Almost every student of the classics will remember with what pleasure he awoke to the idea that the confused mass of names in Xenophon's Anabasis and Cæsar's Commentaries, which so stumbled in his undisciplined larynx, had each a locality upon the map of the world, and represented places as real as the Exeter, the Andover, the Ellington, or the New Haven of his grammar school. Almost every student of the Scriptures will remember a kindred satisfaction at the discovery that the geographical lists of the Book of Joshua had reference to the same Palestine that he now traces upon the map of Syria. The harbor in which a Russian fleet so cruelly massacred a Turkish convoy lying at anchor, was the same Sinope where Xenophon and his retreating army first made port in their coasting voyage down the Euxine. The Scutari where the allied armies had their hospital, was the Chrysopolis of that weary army, returning from defeat and disaster in the East. The Mount Tabor that witnessed the bloody triumphs of Napoleon and of Saladin, is the same from which Deborah and Barak descended to fight against Sisera. The St. Jean d'Acre which the Crusaders held against the Turk, is the Accho of the Phoenicians whose inhabitants Asher could not drive out. The almost fabulous marches of Xerxes toward the West, and of Alexander toward the East, become definite routes of travel when traced upon a map lettered with both ancient and modern names. The great empires of antiquity, that move like shadows over half the globe, assume shape and substance upon a well-defined chart. The travels of Herodotus are less a myth in the imaginary biography of Wheeler,† overlying his accurate geography of the Father of History,

* Judges i. 31.

Life and Travels of Herodotus, by J. Talboys Wheeler, F. R. G. S. York: Harper and Brothers.

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than in the Clio, Euterpe, Melpomene, Urania, of the historian himself.

But while geography thus serves to locate and identify history, it also furnishes materials for history by its own progress as a science. A comparison of maps at different eras affords most striking proofs of the advancement of the human race in the knowledge of its own abode. The circular Thracia and Libya of Homer, girdled by the ocean, and fringed with Cimmerii, Æthiopes, and Pygmæi; the more flattened sphere of Herodotus, divided into the two equal segments of Europa and Asia; the egg-shaped world of Strabo, in which Asia preponderates over both Europa and Libya, and upon whose surface appear the Northern and the Indian Oceans with their respective islands of Britannia and Taprobane; the trapezium-world of Ptolemy, with its well-proportioned Europa, Asia, and Africa, its Britain and its India, its seas, bays, mountains, rivers, and that vast inland Indian Ocean encircled by imaginary coasts of Africa and Asia, the map which settled the geography of the world till Vasco de Gama entered the Indian Ocean by circumnavigating Africa, and Columbus pushed forth in quest of India beyond the Atlantic;

these mark the gradual construction of a science of the earth's surface from an utter blank, as legibly as geological strata mark the structure of the globe itself from chaos. By a series of maps constructed after Homer, Herodotus, Strabo, and Ptolemy, we trace the progress of navigation, of astronomy, of commerce, of travel, of conquest, of empire; while from the actual map of Ptolemy to Mercator's projection, we have the whole progress of the world from the second to the nineteenth century.

These general remarks are strikingly illustrated in the geography of Palestine and Arabia Petræa. Could we transfer to our pages the curious series of maps of the Holy Land collected by Laborde,* and add to them his own and those of Kiepert after Robinson, we should address to the eye a conception of the improved geography of Palestine, which we fear no description of ours can convey to the mind of the

Commentaire Géographique sur l'Exode et les, Nombres, par Léon de Laborde. Paris et Leipzig.

reader. Here, for instance, is a map of Arabia Petræa, with part of Palestine, and of Egypt from Jerusalem to Cairo, drawn after nature, in 1484, by Erhard Rewich, a painter of Utrecht, companion of the traveller Breydenbach. Jerusalem and Cairo appear in the foreground, nearly upon a line; there is hardly any perceptible angle or turn at the junction of the coast of Egypt with that of Syria; the Nile has three mouths, one emptying very near Alexandria; while on the coast of Syria, besides the Rhinocolura, appears the mouth of a large river at Ascalon, and another at Jamnia. The Red Sea has two short square forks, and Mount Sinai, instead of lying between these, appears to the north of them both, and northeast of Cairo. This chart, however, is rather a geographical panorama than a topographical map. Again, we have a map of the same region, with the addition of the route of the Israelites, painted at the beginning of the fifteenth century on the walls of the cathedral of Hereford by Richard Haldingham. This is covered with hieroglyphics, and with figures of birds and animals, illustrating the natural history of each district. Lot's wife appears in a nude figure of melancholy mien, to mark the catastrophe of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Red Sea is unmistakably red, looking like the scarlet pantaloons of a French recruit, with legs of unequal length. A broad track of white through the hither fork, like a plaid on the pantaloons aforesaid, marks the passage of the Israelites. Altogether this is a curious specimen of the geography and the art of the Middle Age. Besides these quaint specimens of cartography, Laborde's work contains maps of Arabia Petræa by Pococke in 1730, by Niebuhr in 1763, by D'Anville in 1764, by the French Commission in 1802, by Burckhardt in 1816, by Ehrenberg in 1824, by Rüppell in 1826, and by Colonel Lupie in 1828, as well as that of the author in 1841. It is curious to observe how the contour of the coast varies in these several maps, and especially how the southern extremity of the peninsula ranges on the scale of longitude from a mere point to a breadth of one and a half degrees. Now this whole region is accurately defined, and we have not only geographical, but geological, maps of Arabia Petræa, that are creditable both to science and to art.

For this improved knowledge of the geography of Palestine we are mainly indebted to the laborious and accurate research and observation of Dr. Edward Robinson. The results of Dr. Robinson's first visit to Palestine have been before the world for fifteen years, and have received the approbation of the most competent critics in England, Germany, and the United States. It were a very inadequate view of these results to regard them as the notes of a traveller, however acute in observing and patient in recording. They were strictly what the title of the volumes describes them to be, Biblical Researches in Palestine, the laborious and continued searching for places mentioned in the Bible, with the Bible itself as the authoritative guide. Strictly speaking, Dr. Robinson made few discoveries. Unlike M. de Saulcy, who was bent upon regarding Palestine as some vast Nimrood mound, which he should first open to the admiration of mankind, and who succeeded in making "capital discoveries" under the very eyes of such competent explorers as Rev. Wm. M. Thomson of Sidon, and Rev. J. L. Porter of Damascus, in their respective beats of travel, our more impassible countryman addressed himself mainly to the work of investigation, leaving nothing to chance, and pursuing nothing from impulse.

The visit of Dr. Robinson to Palestine in 1838 had been preceded by nearly twenty years of special preparation for the exploration of that land, with a view to a systematic work on its physical and historical geography. Dr. Robinson's edition of Calmet, familiar to all Biblical students, and the earlier volumes of the Biblical Repository edited by him, show for how many years his mind was engrossed with the details of Biblical geography before he had the opportunity of visiting the Holy Land. At the same time, his studies in Hebrew lexicography, and in the cognate Arabic, prepared him for those linguistic inquiries and comparisons which proved of so much value in his researches. Thus Dr. Robinson went to Palestine with a thorough and accurate knowledge of the geography of the land as exhibited in the Bible, and also of the observations of all responsible residents and travellers in that land, from Josephus and Jerome down to Von Schubert