So luxurious a bed as that spread upon the desert sand, amid such pure
air for breathing, is scarcely to be obtained but in exactly similar
circumstances; and we were undisturbed by cries of any wild beasts,
although jackals and hyenas are common at night in the more cultivated
parts of Palestine.

_April_ 4.--Thermometer, Fahrenheit, 53.75 degrees at sunrise. We had
our breakfast, and were off again by sunrise. It is said that

"Early to bed, and early to rise,
Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."

It remained to be seen what the effect would be upon us.

The groom being left behind a short time for packing up the kitchen
utensils, allowed us to get out of sight without his observing the
direction we had taken; and, when mounted, he took a wrong course. It
was therefore necessary to give chase towards the hills to recover him.

In an hour we reached two tul'hh (acacia or mimosa) trees, from which, I
believe, the gum-arabic is obtained, and the stump of a third. These
were the first that we had seen. Then descended, during about half an
hour, to the broken walls of a town called _Sufah_, below which commenced
the very remarkable nuk'beh, or precipitous slope into the great Wadi
'Arabah. Before commencing this, however, we paused to survey the savage
scenery around us, and the glorious expanse of the plain, which extends
from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea, and is bounded on one side by the hills
of Judaea, and on the other by the mountains of Edom,--on an average of
3500 feet above the level,--including Mount Hor, the most conspicuous
peak among them. At that time, however, the range was capped with
rolling mists of the morning.

This _Sufah_ is most likely the _Zephath_ of Judges i. 17,--the frontier
town of King Arad the Canaanite, which the tribes of Judah and Simeon
destroyed, and called the site Hormah, (_i.e._, "devoted to
destruction.") If so, it is strange that the Canaanitish name should
outlive the one intentionally given by the early Israelites. Probably,
the surrounding tribes never adopted the Hebrew name, and preserved the
original one.

We were standing among crevasses of shivered mountains, whose strata are
tossed about in fantastic contortions; and what we had yet to traverse
below this, was something like a thousand feet of very slippery rock,
lying in flakes, and sloping two ways at once. The greater length forms
a rough line, at an angle of what seemed to the eye to be o