His Most Important Geographical
Discoveries In This Country Relate To The Nature Of The District Between
The Dead Sea And
The Gulf of Elana; the extent, conformation, and detailed
topography of the Haouran; the situation of Apanea on the river
Orontes,
which was one of the most important cities of Syria under the Macedonian
Greeks; the site of Petreea; and the general structure of the peninsula of
Mount Sinai. Perhaps the most original and important of these illustrations
of ancient geography is that which relates to the Elanitic Gulph: its
extent and form were previously so little known, that it was either
entirely omitted, or very erroneously laid down in maps. From what he
observed here, there is good reason to believe that the Jordan once
discharged itself into the Red Sea; thus confirming the truth of that
convulsion mentioned and described in the nineteenth chapter of Genesis,
which interrupted the coarse of this river; converted the plain in which
Sodom and Gomorrah stood into a lake, and changed the valley to the
southward of this district into a sandy desert.
But Mr. Burckhardt, considering all these excursions, and their consequent
numerous and important accessions to geographical knowledge, as only
preludes to the grand expedition for which he had expressly come to the
East, still looked forward to the interior of Africa. This, however, he was
not destined to reach; for while at Cairo, waiting for a caravan, which was
to proceed by Mourzouck, - a. route which he had long decided on as the most
likely to answer his purpose, - he was suddenly seized with a dysentery, on
the 5th of October, 1817, and died on the 15th.
Travellers in. Egypt and Nubia have been numerous since the time of Mr.
Burckhardt; but as they chiefly directed their investigations and inquiries
to the antiquities of the country, they do not come within our proper
notice; we shall therefore merely mention the names of Belzoni, (whose
antiquarian discoveries have been so numerous and splendid,) Mr. Salt, Mr.
Bankes, &c. To this latter gentleman, however, geography is also indebted
for important additions to its limits; or, rather, for having illustrated
ancient geography. He penetrated, as we have already mentioned, as far as
the second cataract: he visited some of the most celebrated scenes in
Arabia, and made an excursion to Waadi Mooza, or the Valley of Moses. He
also visited Carrac; but the most important discovery of this gentleman
relates to the site of the ancient Petraea, which was also visited by
Burckhardt. Onr readers will recollect that this city has been particularly
noticed in our digression on the early commerce of the Arabians, as the
common centre for the caravans in all ages; and that we traced its ancient
history as far down as there were any notices of it. Its ruins Mr. Bankes
discovered in those of Waadi Mooza, a village in the valley of the same
name.
Since Mr. Burckhardt travelled, geographical discoveries have been made in
this part of the world by Messrs.
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