The North Carolina Standard

A DESERTED CITY.

We take the following description of the wonderful and long deserted CITY OF PETRA, from our countryman Steven's Travels in the East. It is in the valley of Edom (of the Israelites,) near the Dead Sea, and was visited by Mr. S in 1835.

This ancient and extraordinary city is situated within a natural amphitheatre of two or three miles in circumference, encompassed on all sides by rugged mountains five or six hundred feet in height. The whole of this area is now a waste of ruins, dwelling houses, palaces, temples, and triumphal arches, all prostrate together in undistinguishable confusion. The sides of the mountains are cut smooth, in a perpendicular direction, and filled with long and continued ranges of dwelling houses, temples, and tombs, excavated with vast labor out of the solid rock; and while their summit presents Nature in her wildest and most savage form, their bases are adorned with all the beauty of architecture and ranges of corridors, enduring as the mountains out of which they are hewn, and fresh as if the work of a generation scarcely yet gone by.

Nothing can be finer than the immense rocky rampart which encloses the city. Strong, firm and immovable as nature itself, it seems to deride the walls of cities, and the puny fortifications of skilful engineers. The only access is by clambering over this wall of stone, practicable only in one place, or by an entrance the most extraordinary that nature, in her wildest freaks has ever formed. The loftiest portals ever raised by the hands of man, the proudest monuments of architectural skill and daring, sink into insignificance by the comparison. It is, perhaps, the most wonderful object in the world, except the ruins of the city to which it forms the entrance.

Burckhardt had been accosted, immediately upon his entry, by a large party of Bedouins, and had been suffered to remain but a very short time. I expected a scene of the same kind; but at the entrance of the city, there was not a creature to dispute our passage; its portals were wide open, and we passed along the stream, down into the area, and still no man came to oppose us. We moved to the extreme end of the area and when in the act of dismounting at the foot of the rock on which stood the temple that had constantly faced us, we saw one solitary Arab, straggling along without any apparent object, a mere wanderer among the ruins; and it is not an uninteresting fact that this poor Bedouin was the only living being we saw in the desolate city of Petra.

After gazing at us for a few moments from a distance, he came towards us, and in a few moments was sitting down to pipes and coffee with my companions.

Among the ruins is a circular theatre, cut out of the solid rock, containing 33 rows of seats, and capable of holding 3000 people. Although the front pillars have fallen, yet the whole theatre says Mr. Stevens, is in such a state of preservation—that "if the tenants of the tombs around could once more rise into life, they might take their places on the seats."

"Where, he exclaims, "are ye, inhabitants of this desolate city? ye who once sat on the seats of this theatre, the young, the high-born, the beautiful and brave; who once rejoiced in your riches and power, and lived as if there was no grave! where are ye now? Even the very tombs, whose open doors are stretching away in long ranges before the eyes of the wandering traveller cannot reveal your doom. Your dry bones are gone. The robber has invaded your graves, and your very ashes have been swept away to make room for the wandering Arab of the desert."

No description without the aid of plates, can give an adequate conception of the ruins of this wonderful city. Sufficient may be gathered from the preceding account, to convince every reader, that Petra was once a populous, wealthy & luxurious city, adorned with temples, arches and theatres; and that it was for a thousand years utterly forgotten, and that it is now destitute of a single inhabitant.

The most interesting and important consideration connected with the city is, that its ruin is a distinct fulfilment of the ancient prophecies. Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos, Joel, Obediah, and Malachi have announced the desolation of Edom, and some of them in language, which most graphically describes the situation of Petra, "in the clefts of the rocks," and in the height of the hill." Mr. Stevens says:—'Amid all the terrible denunciations against the land of Idumea, 'her cities and the inhabitants thereof, the proud city among the rocks' doubtless for its extraordinary sins, was always marked as a subject of extraordinary vengeance. 'I have sworn by myself, saith the Lord, that Bozrah (the strong or fortified city) shall become a desolation, a reproach, and a waste and a curse, and all, the cities thereof shall be perpetual waste. Lo, I will make thee small among the heathen, and despised among men. Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart. O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill; though thou shouldst make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence saith the Lord They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing; and thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof, and it shall be an habitation for dragons, and a court for owls.' -

I would that the skeptic could stand as I did, among the ruins of this city among the rocks, and there open the sacred book and read the words of the inspired penmen, written when this desolate place was one of the greatest cities in the world.

* Jer. 49: 13, 16. † Isaiah 34: 14, 15.