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.
