new national festival already organized by a sort of discipline among the separate tribes; with all their flocks and herds, with sufficient provisions for an immediate supply, and with the booty they had extorted from their masters, stood prepared as one man for the signal of departure. During the night the permission, or rather intreaty, that they would instantly evacuate the country arrived, yet no one stirred before the morning, perhaps apprehensive lest the slaughter should be attributed to them, or in religious fear of encountering the angel of destruction. The Egyptians became only anxious to accelerate their departure, and thus the Hebrew people set forth to seek a land of freedom, bearing with them the bones of their great ancestor Joseph. Their numbers, not reckoning the strangers who followed them, most of whom probably fell off during the march, amounted to 600,000 adults, which, according to the usual calculations, would give the total sum of the people at 2,500,000 or 3,000,000.* From the point of reunion, at which the several bodies had collected, Rameses, probably another name for Goshen, the borders of Canaan might have been reached, even by so great a multitude, in a few weeks. Two routes led to Canaan; one northward, near the sea, but this was occupied by the Philistines, a very warlike people, with whom the Israelites were not yet sufficiently disciplined to contest their passage. The other passed immediately round the head of the western branch of the Red Sea, coming upon part of the modern track of the caravans

* The question of the numbers will be discussed in a future note.

from Cairo to Suez. Their first march was to Succoth, originally a place of tents, and which probably afterwards grew up into a village. Josephus considers it the same with Latopolis. From Succoth they advanced to Etham, by some supposed to be a castle or small town at the extreme point of the Red Sea, by Jablonski derived with great probability from an Egyptian word signifying the termination of the sea. Here they were on the borders of the desert; should they once advance to any distance in that sandy and barren region they were safe from pursuit; the chariots of Egypt, or even the horsemen, would scarcely follow them far on a track only suited for the camel, and where the want of water, the fountains being already consumed by the flying enemy, would effectually delay the advance of a large army. On a sudden the march of the Israelites is altered; instead of pressing rapidly onwards, keeping the sea on their right hand, and so heading the gulph, they strike to the south, with the sea on their left, and deliberately encamp at no great distance from the shore, at a place called Pi-hahiroth, explained by some the mouth or opening into the mountains. This, however, as well as much more learned etymology, by which the site of Migdol and Baalzephon, as well as Pi-hahiroth, has been fixed, must be considered very uncertain. The king, recovered from his panic, and receiving intelligence that the Israelites had no thoughts of return, determined on pursuit: intelligence of this false movement, or at least of this unnecessary delay on the part of the Israelites, encouraged his hopes of vengeance. The great caste of the warriors, the

second in dignity, were regularly quartered in certain cities on the different frontiers of the kingdom, so that a considerable force could be mustered on any emergency. With great rapidity he drew together 600 war-chariots, and a multitude of others, with their full equipment of officers. In the utmost dismay the Israelites beheld the plain behind them glittering with the hostile array; before them lay the sea, on the right impracticable passes. Resistance does not seem to have, entered their thoughts; they were utterly ignorant of military discipline, perhaps unarmed, and encumbered with their families and their flocks and herds. Because there were no graves in Egypt, they exclaimed, in the bitterness of their despair, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? Their leader alone preserved his calmness and self-possession, and an unexpected incident gave temporary relief to their apprehensions. A remarkable pillar, of cloud by day and fire by night, had preceded their march; it now suddenly shifts its position, and stations itself in the rear, so as to conceal their movements from the enemy, showing the dark side to them, while the bright one gave light to the Hebrew camp. But this could not avail them long; they could hear, at still diminishing distance, the noise of the advancing chariots, and the cries of vengeance from the infuriated Egyptians. On a sudden Moses advances towards the sea, extends his rod, and a violent wind from the east begins to blow. The waters recede on both sides, a way appears; at nightfall, probably about eight o'clock, the caravan begins to defile along this awful pass. The wind continued in the same quarter all the

night; but immediately they had passed over, and while the Egyptians, madly plunging after them, were in the middle of the passage, the wind as suddenly fell, the waters rushed back into their bed, the heavy chariot-wheels of the pursuers sank into the sand, broke and overthrew the chariots, and in this state of confusion the sea swept over the whole host, and overwhelmed the king and all the flower of the Egyptian army. Such is the narrative of Moses, which writers of all ages have examined, and, according to the bias of their minds, have acknowledged or denied the miraculous agency, increased or diminished its extent. At an early period, historians (particularly in Egypt) hostile to the Jews, asserted that Moses, well acquainted with the tides of the Red Sea, took advantage of the ebb, and passed over his army, while the incautious Egyptians, attempting to follow, were surprised by the flood and perished. Yet, after every concession, it seems quite evident that, without one particular wind, the ebb tide, even in the narrowest part of the channel, could not be kept back long enough to allow a number of people to cross in safety. We have then the alternative of supposing, that a man of the consummate prudence and sagacity, and the local knowledge, attributed to Moses, altered, suspended, or at least did not hasten his march, and thus deliberately involved the people, whom he had rescued at so much pains and risk, in the danger of being overtaken by the enemy, led back as slaves, or massacred, on the chance that an unusually strong wind would blow at a particular hour, for a given time, so as to keep back the flood, then die away and allow the tide

VOL. I.

G

to return at the precise instant when the Egyptians were in the middle of their passage.

Different opinions, as to the place where the passage was effected, have likewise been supported with ingenuity and research. The one carries the Israelites nearly seventy miles down the western shore of the sea, to Bedea, where it is said that an inlet, now dry, ran up a defile in the mountains; that in this defile, the opening of which was the Pihahiroth of Moses, and which ended in this inlet of the sea called, according to the advocates of this hypothesis, Clusma, the Israelites were caught as in what is commonly called a cul-de-sac. Here, however, the sea is nearly twelve miles broad, and the time is insufficient to allow so great a multitude to pass over, particularly if they did not, as some Jewish writers suppose, send their families and cattle round the head of the gulf. The other hypothesis rests chiefly on the authority of the Danish traveller Niebuhr, who had investigated the question on the spot. He supposes that the passage was effected near the modern Suez, which occupies the site of an old castle, called by the Arabians al Kolsum, a name apparently derived from the Greek Klusma. Here Niebuhr himself forded the sea, which is about two miles across, but he asserts confidently that the channel must formerly have been much deeper, and that the gulf extended much farther to the north, than at present. The intelligent Burckhardt adopts the views of Niebuhr. Here, besides that the sea is so much narrower, the bottom is flat and sandy; lower down it is full of sharp coral rocks, and sea weed in such large quantities, that