upper or northern end of the Red Sea has risen, so that the place of the passage of the children of Israel is now between forty and fifty miles from Suez, the modern head of the Gulf.  This upheaval, and not the sand from the desert, caused the disuse of the ancient canal across the Isthmus:  it took place since the Mohamadan conquest of Egypt.  The women of the Jewish captivities were carried past the end of the Red Sea and along the Mediterranean in ox-waggons, where such cattle would now all perish for want of water and pasture; in fact, the route to Assyria would have proved more fatal to captives then than the middle passage has been to Africans since.  It may be true that, as the desert is now, it could not have been traversed by the multitude under Moses—­the German strictures put forth by Dr. Colenso, under the plea of the progress of science, assume that no alteration has taken place in either desert or climate—­but a scientific examination of the subject would have ascertained what the country was then when it afforded pasture to “flocks and herds, and even very much cattle.”  We know that Eziongeber was, with its docks, on the seashore, with water in abundance for the ship-carpenters:  it is now far from the head of the Elaic Gulf in a parched desert.  Aden, when visited by the Portuguese Balthazar less than 300 years ago, was a perfect garden; but it is now a vast conglomeration of black volcanic rocks, with so little vegetation, that, on seeing flocks of goats driven out, I thought of the Irish cabman at an ascent slamming the door of his cab and whispering to his fare, “Whish, it’s to desave the baste:  he thinks that you are out walking.”  Gigantic tanks in great numbers and the ruins of aqueducts appear as relics of the past, where no rain now falls for three or more years at a time.  They have all dried up by a change of climate, possibly similar and cotemporaneous with that which has dried up the Dead Sea.

The journey of Ezra was undertaken after a fast at the River Ahava.  With nearly 50,000 people he had only about 8000 beasts of burden.  He was ashamed to ask a band of soldiers and horsemen for protection in the way.  It took about four months to reach Jerusalem; this would give five and a half or six miles a day, as the crow flies, which is equal to twelve or fifteen miles of surface travelled over; this bespeaks a country capable of yielding both provisions and water, such as cannot now be found.  Ezra would not have been ashamed to ask for camels to carry provisions and water had the country been as dry as it is now.  The prophets, in telling all the woes and miseries of the captivities, never allude to suffering or perishing by thirst in the way, or being left to rot in the route as African slaves are now in a well-watered country.  Had the route to Assyria been then as it is now, they could scarcely have avoided referring to the thirst of the way; but everything else is mentioned except that.