RITTER'S GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE.*

BY the publication of these four handsome volumes, Messrs. T. and T. Clark, of Edinburgh, have added one more to the numer- ous claims they had already established on the gratitude of all British students of Biblical literature. Among the treasures of Continental theological learning embraced in the extensive cata- logue of translations which these enterprising publishers have placed at the command of the English reader, few, if any, will find a wider welcome than the condensed translation of Ritter's labours on the Holy Land now before us. To clergymen these volumes will prove not less interesting than instructive and useful. 'Theological students will find in them the most exhaustive store- house of facts on the subject existing in the language, while upon all the moot points of Palestinian and Sinaitic geography they will meet with a condensed summary of all the arguments of every writer of note, from the earliest ages down to the period of the author's death. In a word, these four volumes give the essence of the entire literature of the subject of every age and language.

Ritter's gigantic work, Die Vergleichende Erdkunde von Asien, consists of nineteen volumes large octavo, comprising precisely 21,000 closely printed pages. Of this mountain of learning the geography of Syria, Palestine, and the Peninsula of Sinai forms a. distinct section, filling six volumes, with 4,506 pages. Some estimate of the vast mass of matter contained in Ritter's work may be formed, when it is stated that an unabridged translation of these six volumes alone would fill no less than fourteen volumes of the size of the four of the English translation now under review (and which themselves fill 1,660 pages), while it would have taken at least seventy such volumes to reproduce the whole of Ritter's labours on Asiatic geography. It must not, however, be supposed, merely because we have but four instead of fourteen volumes in this condensed translation, that we have here to do with an incom- plete and fragmentary work. The four volumes before us form a complete and homogeneous whole in themselves. Ritter's object in dealing with the above-mentioned countries was not to illustrate the geography of the Bible alone, but to present a universal geography of that portion of the Asiatic continent, in its relations to all history, all monarchies, and all social, political, and religious changes. Biblical geography was, therefore, included in it as simply one branch of an exhaustive scheme. The object of the English editor, on the other hand, was simply to present the geography of the land in which Judaism and Christianity had their birth. It was beyond his scope to include Ritter's valuable researches into the geography of Syria, as connected with heathen history, or even to enter into the geography of any of the lauds connected with Scripture history, except Palestine and the Sinaitic Peninsula. In the work of selecting from so large a mass of materials the proper portions respectively for translation and for abridgment, Mr. Gage, the translator, himself an enthusiastic admirer and pupil of Ritter, tells us that he took the precaution to consult some of the most eminent living geographers of Germany. The readers of these volumes have every reason to be satisfied with the result. In the parts he has selected for abridgment and condensation, as well as in those he has translated without curtailment, especially the masterly mono- graphs, to some of which we shall recur below, we think the editor and translator has given evidence of the application of com- petent knowledge and sound judgment. Not only in the uncur- tailed portions of the translation, but also in those parts which are more or less condensed, the reader will find a fullness of detail ample to satisfy the most eager thirst for particulars.

Of the literary workmanship of the translation itself we are not able always to speak in terms of unqualified approval. The translator, as his preface and occasional notes sufficiently testify, is a very fair master of English, and the greater portion of the four volumes reads with the fluency of an untranslated work.

• The Goenparatile Geography of Palesiins and the Sinitic Peninsula. By Carl Bitter. TrunaLded and adopted to Um me of Biblical atudana. By Wiliam L. Gage. 4 yds. large Sm. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. 1880. -But here and there,—though we have not observed anything very heinous,—there are crudenessee and clumainesse,a- of expression which bear unmistakable evidence of their origin, and which the translator will do well to remove from a second edition of the work.

The method pursued by Ritter in treating the geography of. Palestine, is first to give a general outline of its physical char- acteristics, and then to take up its political divisions in historical order. He proceeds to give the details of, both these branches of the subject in the form of so-called " Discursione,"i.e., excursions, following, in the one case the paths indicated by the physical. conformation of the country ; in the other, the high roads, caravan routes, &c. To this he adds a full account of the various races or tribes who have inhabited the different portions of the country, in their chronological succession. In the first of the four volumes before us this plan is followed in regard to the Peninsula of Sinai. In the remaining three volumes the geography of Palestine is similarly treated, commencing with the most remote periods and coining down to the present time. Further than this, Ritter reviews the whole literature bearing on the geography of Palestine. from the earliest times down to the year when he was writing, adding a brief critical estimate of every important work. To this he has added an account of all the more noteworthy maps. ever published. The editor, taking up the literature at the year 1852, where Ritter's review closes, adds a catalogue of all the works on the geography of the Holy Land published between the commencement of that year and the end of 1865. The list: amounts to the large total of upwards of 400 works, and is followed by a catalogue of upwards of 50 maps and charts, published in the same period.

Among those portions of the translation which have been rendered without abridgment, Ritter's masterly monographs on. Jerusalem (covering upwards of 200 pages of the fourth volume), on the Canaanite tribes, Philistia, and manna may be particularly mentioned. They each and all present the latest results of philo- logical erudition, scientific research, and the personal inspection of localities carried on by travellers on the spot. In regard to the nature of manna, Ritter accepts the explanation of Ehrenberg, who, in the year 1823, discovered the method of its production.. It is a kind of guns, caused to distil from the bark of the tamarisk or tarfa tree of the Arabs (tamarix gallica mannifera.—Ehrb.), by the punctures or incisions of a certain insect:— "The small tender twigs. Ehrenberg found covered sometimes with the little insect which is instrumental in producing the manna. (coccus manniparus--Ehrb.), an ellipticakwax-colourod, cochineal kermes, about three lines in length. The incisions were in some places so numerous as to give the twigs a warty aspect. Out of these little punctures (never from the loaves)—punotures so small as to be invisible to the naked eye—there exudes in rainy years a clear sap, which gradually thickens and acquires the consistency of syrup. Before and shortly after sunrise it is hard, and drops-to the ground like hail, in which state it is easily gathered in considerable quantities."

The fact that manna, perfectly answering the description in Genesis, exists in the Sinaitic Peninsula even at the present day could not but have been welcomed, we should have thought, by every Biblical student, as a most interesting confirmation of the substantial truth of the Scriptural account of the wanderings of the Israelites in the Desert. But there are men who resent every natural explanation of the wonders recorded in the Scriptures, as though it were derogatory to the Almighty. And so there have not been wanting those who have shown some bitterness in regard to Ehrenberg's discovery. Thus Carl von Raumer scornfully remarks :-

"Ehrenberg would have us believe that the children of Israel walked under a grove of tamarisk, covered with bugs, and dropping sweetness, all the way from Mount Sinai to Edrei."

Aud Dr. Bonar, in his Desert of Sinai, attacks Ritter with much asperity for venturing to adopt Ehrenberg's explanation. The manna of Sinai, it may be added, is not the manna of com- merce or medicine. It is found nowhere else in the world except in the immediate neighbourhood of the holy mountain. The manna of commerce is, however, produced in a precisely similar manner by an insect from other trees, as by the cicada from the ash (fraxinus ornus) in Calabria. The Sinaitic manna is only pro- duced in rainy years, and then only during a single month of the year. The Bedouins gather it and eat it spread upon bread like honey, regarding it as a great luxury. Sometimes, owing to no rain falling, five or six years have passed without any being pro- duced at all. At present five or six hundred pounds' weight of it is all the now scanty trees are capable of producing in the season. Part of this is taken by the Bedouins to Cairo and sold. It fetches about four shillings per pound.

In regard to the Dead Sea, a very complete and interesting account is given at the end of the third volume, including a full description of Lynch's and other expeditions. To these the editor has added, in the form of appendixes, an account of M. Louis Lartet's recent investigations on the basin of this lake, on the chemical composition of its waters and the origin of its salt, and other peculiarities. Ritter's account of that wonderful city of the desert, Petra, the capital of the Nabathaaans, whose houses, temples, tombs, and mausoleums are all hewn out of the solid rock, and still remain substantially uninjured, is also extremely interesting. But it would be impossible to mention all the good things in these volumes. We must, however, say a. few words upon Ritter's mag- nificent monograph on the situation of Ophir, which we regard as one of the gems of the work. The locality of this place, to which the fleet of Solomon, starting from the Idumtean port of Ezionge- ber, on the lElanitic Gulf (the Gulf of Akaba, as it is now termed), sailed to fetch gold, and precious stones, and sandalwood, and peacocks, has been a puzzle and a problem to scholars from the earliest times. The greatest divergencies of opinion have been manifested on this point :—

" Calmet considers it to have been Armenia ; Hardt, Phrygia ; Older- man, Iberia ; Lipenius and Josephus attribute the name to the Golden Chersonese (Further India); Relandus and Ouseley think it was Ceylon; MacDonald imagines that he finds its location in Sumatra ; Dapper, Lopez, and Bruce in Sofala and Mozambique ; Montesquien and D'Anville, on the eastern coast of Africa. Arias Montanus, Pfeffelius, and others have gone still further, looking for Ophir in Peru ; while the great navigator Columbus was convinced that he had discovered it in the West Indies, and wrote in a letter to his Government that the mountain of Sopora [a name of Orphir, given in the Septuagint as Sophora], which the ships of Solomon were three years in reaching, is in the island of Hayti, and has come, with all its treasures, into the possession of the King of Spain.' "

Ritter's treatment of this apparently hopeless question is a masterpiece of mature scholarship and sound judgment. The whole monograph is a model of its kind. It is the ripe result of patient industry and encyclopaedic learning, coupled with a calm, +keen critical faculty. Ritter allows no hint in any known writer to escape him. Classical or Oriental, ancient or modern, there is no language, from Sanscrit to Spanish, but, if necessary, he calls it into requisition. No writer of weight who has started a new theory, or with new arguments supported an old one, but finds all his arguments carefully weighed and justly dealt with at Ritter's hands. What we are now saying of the monograph on the

situation of Ophir is, however, applicable to everything our author wrote. We have not apace here to give a sketch of Ritter's treatment of the Ophir problem. We must refer our readers to the monograph itself. We can barely add that the theory to

which Ritter inclines, and which he defends against Vincent, Quatremere, Keil, and a host of others, is that of Lassen, who; proving the Indian origin of the Scriptural names of the articles brought from Ophir (except such as had Semitic names), shows reason for placing it on the north-west coast of Hindostan, near the months of the Indus, and makes it identical with the Ablim .01, the Indians.

We will close with an extract, bearing upon a locality which within the past year has assumed an interest far beyond the circle of purely Biblical students. Not far from the western shore of the Dead Sea there is a subterranean spot to which a celebrated allusion was made in the last session of Parliament, and to which our author in one of his " Discursions " in the vicinity of the western shore of the Asphaltite Lake thus introduces us :—

"A narrow and picturesque gorge runs along the north-east side of the Frank Mountain to Wadi Urtas, displaying high precipitous rocks on both sides, on whose crest may be seen the remains of a square tower of the village of Khureitun, a little beyond which is the opening to an immense cave, which can be entered on foot. Eli Smith, as well as Irby and Mangles, have described it under the name of the Laby- xinth. They dismounted from their horses, and followed a long and winding passage until they reached some natural chambers and caverns onboth aides. At length they came to a large chamber with high natural arches; from this thereran galleries in several directions, forming a perfect labyrinth, and said by their guides never to have been thoroughly in- vestigated. The galleries, so far as they explored them, they estimated to be about four feet high, three feet wide, and free from rubbish ; the air was sweet and pure. In one apartment were to be seen fragments of pottery, and on the walls the names of English travellers who had been there, written with coal. The caverns seemed to have once been in- habited: the legend calls them the Caves of Adullam."

If Ritter has here omitted to supply us with the names of the adventurous Britons who, in the lack of chalk or chisel, sought immortality on the walls of the Cave by the help of so novel a writing material as a lump of Wallsend, the omission, almost the only one we have noticed in the whole work, may with safety be left to be supplied by our readers for themselves. And should the partizans of the hon. member for Birmingham 'be tempted to

feel any undue elation at the above independent testimony to the justice of his celebrated impeachment, they should not forget that the hon. gentlemen, the members for Cake and Stroud, are able to defend themselves by the retort that they found their underground lodgings distinguished by a remarkable absence of refuse, and an atmosphere of the moat healthy and salubrious description.