THE LAND OF MIDIAN.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1372, 9 July 1878, Page 3

THE LAND OF MIDIAN.

The Alexandria correspondent of the London " Times " gives the following narrative of Captain Burton's recent expeditions and discoveries in the land of Midian : The return of Captain Burton and his party from the Land of Midian at the beginning of this week is already known by telegraph in England. The object of the expedition was to examine into the mineral wealth of the country, which hitherto haß been very little visited by travellers, and is only imperfectly known to geographers. Yet, the minerals of Midian were known both in biblical and classical times. Everybody remembers how Moses, when he fled from the face of Pharaoh, dwelt in the land of Midian, and married the priest's daughter ; and, how, notwithstanding this alliance, the children of Israel, after the Exodus, vexed with the wiles of the Midianites, made war upon them, and slew their kings, and burnt their cities and their goodly castles, and spoiled them of "gold, silver, brass, iron, tin, and lead," and " jewels of gold, chains and bracelets, rings, earrings, and tablets," and how Moses ordered the wrought jewels of gold to be brought into the Tabernacle a 8 a memorial. It is equally well known, too, how the Romans long afterwards again worked the mines whence these metals were dug, and many are the traces of their work which Captain Burton has recently found. Yet next to nothing is now known of the country, its wild wastes of rock, its barren valleys and precipitous mountains, its vast half-worked mines, its ruined cities, and its wandering and savage population. The expedition left Suez December 10th, 1877, and returned there on April 20th, 1878. During four months of hard travelling and voyaging upwards of 2500 miles they only lost one soldier, who died of fever. They brought homo some twenty-five tons of geological specimens to illustrate the general geological formation of the land; six cases of Colorado and Negro ore j five cases of ethnological and anthropological collections—such as Midianite coins, inscription in Nabathean and Cufic, remains of, worked atones, fragments of smelted metala a glaos and pottery; upwards of 200 sketches in oil and water colors, photographs of the chief ruins, including catacombß, and of a classical temple, apparently of Greek art; and, finally, maps and plans of the whole country, including thirty-two ruined cities, some of whose names can be restored by consulting Strabo and Ptolemy, besides sketches of many ateliers perambulating bands like the gipsies of ancient and modern timet; aoems to have carried on simple m;niug operations. Among the specimens are argentiferous and cupriferous ores from Northern Midian, and 1 auriferous rocks from Southern. There are collections from three turquoise mines, the northern, near Aynuneh, already worked; the southern, near Ziba, still scratched by the Arabs; and the central, until now unknown save to the Bedouins. There are, moreover, three great, sulphur beds, the northern and the belonging to the secondary formation (now invaded by the trap granite), and the central, near the port of Mowilah, of pyretic origin. Eock saJtt accompanies the brimstone, and there are two large natural salt lakes, The whole of the secondary formation, M.upplies fino gypsum, and in parts of it are quarrieß of nlabuster, which served, to. build the ruins of Mag-hair, Sheeayh, Madiama (of Ptolemy), and cl-Haura (Leuke Kome), the southernmost part of ■western Nabathea. The caravan consisted of eight Europeans, three Egyptian officers of the staff and two of the line, twenty-five soldiers and thirty miners, ten mules, and about 100 camels. The northern excursion commenced at Mowilah, the port of arrival in Midian.

They re-visited the country covered by Captain Burton's expedition last year, the story of which will'be told in his forthcoming book, " The Gold Mines of Midian," which I must not anticipate. After re-inspection of the ancient workings of the precious metals, passing the traditional site of Moses' Well, they marched upon Makna, the port, and spent a week digging into and extracting the veins of silver which thread the quartz, carelessly cupeled specimens yielding 15 to 20 per cent, of silver. The second expedition followed and was directed to the inland region east of Mowilah. The object was to determine the longitudinal breadth of the metalliferous country. A double chain of ghauts subtends the coast, and a succession of valleys cut through these heights. Beyond the ghauts a rough and precipitous pass, terrible for loaded camels, leads to the Hisma, a plateau some 4000 ft. high, of now red sandstone, which is in reality tha western wall of the Nejd, or great centre uplands of the Arabian peninsula, and is remarkable for the beauty of its brick-red precipices and castellations. East of the Hisma lie the dark lines of the Marreh, the basaltic and doubtless volcanic regions whence the miners of old brought the rough mill-stone that served for their first grindings. But here the expedition reckoned without its hosts, the Maazeh, a semi-Egyptian tribe, who received them apparently with friendliness, but all the while were preparing for attack, murder, and plunder. The trap, however, was badly set for an old traveller. Captain Burton guessed the coming dagger, and was able to beat a hasty retreat without bloodshed. The expedition, altering its plans, then turned to the south-east. They passed through the lovely Wady Daumah, onoe teeming with fertility, now laid waste by the Bedouin, " the fathers of the Desert." They discovered the ruins of the city of Sheewak (the Souka of Ptolemy), which, with its ontlying suburbs, its aqueducts carefully built with cement, its barrages across the village heads, its broken catacombß, its furnaces and vast vsines, covers some four miles. Here and elsewhere the furnaces were carefully searched. The Colorado quartz-ore and the chloritic greenstone, used as flux, showed what ore had been treated ; but so painstaking were these old miners that not the minutest trace of metal was left to tell its own talc Sheewak was evidently a city of workmen, probably of slave workmen. A few miles to the south lay Shaghab, the ruins of whioh, far superior in site and construction, suggested the residence of the wealthy mine-owners. Here the expedition turned west. The country was barren, roadless, and very thinly inhabited, but they came upon the ruinous traces of mining operations at every stage. March sth they arrived at the flourishing little port of Ziba (Zibber on the hydrographic chart), built with the remnants of some older town. Near Ziba was found the southernmost of the turquoise mines. Its natives have learnt the art of promoting the growth of pearls by inserting a grain of sand into each oyster. The third, or southern excursion, which Captain Burton was enabled to undertake by the dispatoh of a second ship and another month's food from Suez, proved by far the most interesting to mineralogist and archaeologist alike. Gold mining evidently here takes the place of •diver and copper extracting, and the vast traces of the labors of the scientific old miners in shafting and tunnelling teach exactly their modus operandi. The Marreh, or volcanic district, which they, inspeoted, extends as far as Yembo, and possibly as far as Medina, the Holy City. It is covered with ruins of mining works, and the expedition found gold threading and filming the basalt, which led them to believe this district to be the focus of the mineralogical outcrop. Mesnwhile, M. Marie, the mining engineer, proceeded to the southern depot of sulphur, and discovered a third hill distant only two miles from a navigeable bay. He secured specimens of this rock and also of chalcedony, the material of the finely-engraved seals and amulets worked by the natives. He found, and the whole party afterwards visited, an outcrop of quartz, in mounds, hillocks, and gigantic reefs, called '* Abel Marwah," and the disused works, of great extent, were surveyed. The caravan, now guided by the Balizy tribe, which claims some of the old mining districts, left the port of Wedj, March 23rd, and visited the ruins of Um el Karayyat (" Mother of Villages"), where the remains of mining operations lie scattered about in all directions. In parts the hill of snowy quartz had been so well burrowed into that it has fallen in. All the shafts and passages were duly explored. The precious metal was extracted from the rose-colored schist veining the quartz and specimens of free gold appeared. The next march showed the Um el Kharab (" Mother of Desolation"), in which an extensive vein had been worked, and pillara of quartz left standing between roof and floor. Travelling through a land once rieh and prosperous as mining could make it, now the very picture of drt&ry desoLtion, the travellers reached the plain El Bed a (Bedais of Ptolemy), Hero the hills of red porphyry were covered with religious inscriptions in the Cufio and modern Arab characters ; nothing Nabathean occurred. On April Bth, after traversing another quartz country, the expedition reached their Ultima Thule, the Wady Hams, the great gap worked by water in the maritime mountain chain which forms the highway for pilgrims returning from Medina, and constitutes the frontier between Egypt and the Hedjaz, which belongs to Turkey. Here a pleasant surprise awaited the party. On the southern brink of this wild watercourse was the site of a beautiful little temple, built of white and variegated alabaster, dug from neighbouring quarries. The foundations alone were left, and a few years ago the place was a tumulus into which the Arabs dug for treasure. The Wady had washed away the northern wall, and the adjacent bed was strewn with fragments of columns, bases and capitals, all of alabaster and cut in the simple Bt and purest style of Greek art. Can this be a vestige of that illfated expedition, in which iElius Gallus was foiled by the traitor Nabathiusus ? This closed the expedition. The_ party returned to Suez, and arrived in Cairo the 21st of April. They received a most courteous welcome from his Highness the Khedive. Specimens of their ores will be sent to Paris and London ; the rest will be analysed in Cairo by a local commission, while the curiosities of all kinds will be exhibited first in Cairo, and then sent to the Paris Exhibition.