Note 304 — XI. JERUSALEM TO PETRA, AND RETURN BY THE DEAD SEA.

It is not to be supposed, however, that this is a just representation of all that “great and terrible wilderness” through which the Israelites were led for forty years. It is indeed “a land not sown,” (Jer. ii. 2,) and a land of pits and drought fearful to contemplate, as a journey for a wandering population of nearly two millions of souls, especially in the hottest seasons of the year; but the peculiarly terrible wilderness must have been among the defiles, hemmed in by scorching cliffs in the Sinaitic peninsula.