VISIT TO PETRA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 October 1941, Page 3

VISIT TO PETRA

* NEW ZEALANDER IN ANCIENT CITY NATURAL COLOURING AMAZING. BUILDINGS IN SANDSTONE WALLS. (Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.) CAIRO, August 24. Stereotyped, organised sightseeing trips are only a mild form of diversion to Arthur Helm, a young Riverton signals corporal serving in a New Zealand brigade. Fascinated by the storied ruins and relics that lie on the deserts of the Middle East, he has followed in the footsteps of Biblical figures, the Crusaders, eastern merchants, explorers and invading armies but seldom in those of the ordinary tourist. He writes his own itineraries. In leave periods before and since the Balkans campaign, Corporal Helm has travelled on trains, army trucks, horseback and camel through Palestine, Transjordania and Syria. His most surprising excursion was a recent visit to Petra, ancient, hill-encircled city on the old caravan route Damascus-Bag-dad-Cairo, lost to the world for 15 centuries after it was overrun by the Arabs in the years of their conquests. Last December Corporal Helm tasted real Arab hospitality on his first out-of-the-way tour. This was to northern Transjordania, where ah Arab Legion staff car with two drivers was put at his disposal for a whole day. One of the high points of the trip was a talk he had with Glubb Pasha, who has been called the modern Lawrence of Arabia.

At the start of his more recent journey to Petra, he had breakfast in Cairo, lunch in Jerusalem and dinner in Amhiaii, the capital Of Transjordania. Associations with Lawrence kept recurring as he travelled across the desert on the Hedjaz railway from Amman to its terminal at Ma’an. “This was the line which Lawrence and his men used to blow up,” he remarked today. “I'll remember the trip always for the beautiful mirages I saw; they were far better than anything we have seen in Egypt. I was the Ohly Britisher on the train, which was crowded with Bedouins belonging to tribes that fought with Lawrence. When I stepped off at Ma’an in my New Zealand hat, three Englishmen there nearly collapsed with surprise. “After spending a night as the guest of an R.A.F. station, I went by car with a party of airmen to an Arab frontier post, passing the famous spring which the Bible says was produced by Moses during the journey through the wilderness. Clear, cold water gushes straight out of the solid rock.

“The surrounding country there was typical desert, dotted With Bedouin tents. This was as far as we could go towards Petra by car, and so we hired Arab horses, which you drive with a single chain instead of the usual reins, but they are easy to handle and very fast. Ahead of us loomed the weird mountains which hid Petra from the Outside world for 1500 years up to the last century. They are like huge humps, reddish in colour, rising straight out of the desert. “We picked our way along a rocky path along the foot of the mountains. There Seemed no way through them until we came to a narrow gorge, only 10 to 20 feet wide but nearly a mile long, and with cliffs on each side as high as 500 feet, it brought us out on to a sight that made us gasp—the Treasury of the Pharoah, an exquisitely carved building. Then we passed through a smaller gorge opening on to Petra itself.

“The town is impossible to describe properly. It is built around the walls of a natural basin in the mountains, and its temples, Amphitheatre, tombs, aqueducts and storehouses are actually carved into these sandstone walls. The natural Colouring is amazing—veins and strata of red, purple, pink, yellow, white and almost everything else. “In the afternoon we climbed to an ancient temple on a mountain top and looked . across at Mount Hof, where Aaron,. Moses’s bfother, vias buried, and dowh along the Wadi Arabah. which is the continuation of the Jordan Valley below the Dead Sea. The country was so barren and lifeless that it was like looking at the moun'tains of the moon. “The officer commanding the Transjordan Frontier Force gave me a ride back to Amman in his car, and on -the way he took me to see the ruins of a Persian hunting lodge at M’Shetta, which used to be alive with gazelle and other game. Though it is hundreds of years old, the lodge is built of bricks which seem exactly the kind used in New Zealand houses today. A beautifully carved wall surrounds it.” i The whole trip cost Corporal Heim only £8 of £9. Since then he has been. to. Syria; where lie and Lieutenant H. M. Swinburh, of Palmefstbh North, Visited many places famous in both ancient and modern history. They Went through Tyre and Sidon, saw the InarkS of recent fighting at Damour, and listened to a Free French Force band concert in the square at BeyrOt.it. They felt a pahg of homesickness in the clear, pure Lebanon air, inspected huge ruined temples of Jupiter, Bacchus and Venus at Baalbek, went shopping in the old oriental bazaars of Damascus', and watched mosaics being made. They took a different route homewards, travelling down the Yarmuk River’ railway to the Sea of Galilee. _ . ... ... e