en track, others have taken the trouble to visit them, but without
finding any inscriptions. I have seen one inscription, the following in
Greek, and apparently unfinished:--

[Greek text]

Although in some respects these resemble the sepulchres near Jerusalem,
they are not so elaborately formed into passages and inner chambers as
the latter. Many of the excavations high above the ground have been at
some era adapted to residences for hermits.

Near Saida I have been shown sepulchres that were entered by steps and
passages, and coated with very hard stucco, on which were pictures in
fresco of festoons of olive and vine leaves alternated, these leaves
being diversified sometimes with tints of autumnal brown, also trees of
palm or olive, with birds upon their branches; the birds being all of one
kind, with long tails, and coloured bright yellow and red, with brown
backs. Inasmuch as these portray living creatures they must be ascribed
to some classical, _i.e._, ante-Islamitic epoch. The designing and
colouring of them are excellent, and the work remains in good
preservation; they are most likely of Roman art, for their style much
resembles the wall pictures of Pompeii.

I have met with no mention of these decorated sepulchres, but in Ritter's
quotation from Mariti, (Saida's Umgebungen in vol. iv. I, page 410,) and
that only lately.

The sepulchre which I entered consisted of one principal chamber, at each
side of which were three smaller recesses, besides two such opposite the
entrance. These latter have others proceeding further within them.
There are no low shelves as in the Judaean sepulchres, but the dead were
laid in shallow trenches sunk in the rocky floor. The stucco has only
been employed to the right and left of the principal chamber.

I pass over, as not belonging to this subject, the more recent discovery
by others near the town in 1855 of the two sarcophagi, one of them
bearing a Phoenician inscription.

[Picture: Temple of Baal (see p284)]

XI. JERUSALEM TO PETRA, AND RETURN BY THE DEAD SEA.

During the last twenty years there have been many English and other
visitors to Petra; but they have usually taken it in the way from Egypt
towards Jerusalem, which is probably convenient with respect to the
season of the year, inasmuch as they thereby get a warm winter before the
"sights" of Jerusalem (as some irreverently speak) begin. It would not
be so well to take Egy