discoverable if we but knew where to look. But the sharp eyes of the Arabs have been for ages everywhere on the surface, and the region around Sinai, the most hopeful place, has been occupied by hermits and monks for fourteen hundred years or more. Any trace of Israel must be below the surface.

One who studies the map and traverses the region will naturally believe that from Sinai the route followed the great Wady Sa'al, and possibly the parallel Wady Biyar to the north, and emerged somewhere near the northern extremity of the Gulf of Akabah. Indeed, one encampment, before Kadesh, was at Ezion-gaber upon that gulf (Num. xxxiii, 36). This, however, appears to have been near the end of their wandering. They were at Kadesh also near the beginning of the forty years (Num. xiii, 36). For thirty-seven years we have no record of them except the table of their encampments in Numbers. This list may indicate rather the movements of the headquarters. We naturally suppose (with Fries, Kurtz, and Schultz) that the necessities of subsistence would lead to a dispersion of the host through the more fertile regions in the "wilderness of Paran," in the numerous valleys that admit of cultivation or afford pasturage, principally on its northern border, which still show multitudes of ancient ruins, more or less elaborate, the tokens of a former unknown occupancy. Two principal claims are made for the site of Kadesh, which was the place of repeated visits and of final departure: one by Dr. Robinson, at Ain el Weibeh, on the western edge of the Arabah, or Ghor, for which the definite and positive reasons are very slight; the other at Ain Gadiz, some forty or fifty miles farther west, to which the distance is thought to be an objection, but for which several positive reasons are offered. If this were accepted, the several stations across the desert to Kadesh would easily correspond to certain stations indicated in the Peutinger tables, or the ancient but much later Roman road from Akaba northwesterly into Wady Mayin, and thence northward by the modern route. It is "eleven days' journey from Horeb to Kadesh" (Deut. i, 2). If this be the actual Kadesh, it is easy to see the impracticability of the people's forcing their way, as they once attempted (Num. xiv, 44, 45), directly north into Palestine through a region of strongholds occupied by a warlike people;* and the

* Within a very limited area in the Negeb, or south country, and just north of the desert, there are still to be seen the ruins of five considerable towns: El Birein, El Abdeh, El Aujeh, Sebaita, and Ruhaibeh. Robinson conjectures the former popula. tion of Ruhaibeh alone at from twelve to fifteen thousand. All these lie within a

military wisdom of the final circuit whereby Joshua struck Palestine on its eastern border, suddenly planted himself in its center, and subdued it in detail.

The water-supply of this whole region, though scanty, is much more considerable than has usually been represented. In the Sinaitic Peninsula, Rev. F. W. Holland, who has traveled over it more than any other European, declares himself able to count twenty streams which are perennial, except in unusually dry seasons. The present writer and his company saw on their way nine running streams, larger or smaller, and seven other springs, besides moist places where water could have been found by digging, and they passed in the near vicinity of at least nine more places of water-supply. We saw also a natural reservoir in Wady Macheira, and a smaller one in Hebran. Burkhardt tells of several southeast of El Murkha, Schubert of one farther south, and Stephens of one near Wady Shellal. The immediate vicinity of Sinai is well supplied with streams, springs, and wells. The Desert of Et Tih, north of the Sinaitic Peninsula, is skirted by several springs on its southern and its northern edges, and at least six on its eastern border, while on or near the middle line are wells at Mabbuk, and in Wady Kubab (according to Rüppell), the two deep wells at Nukhl, the Bir el Achmar of Seetzen, Russegger's wells of Redschin, Bir Kureis, Bir Themed, a well in Wady Tamat, and the wells at Akaba, where also fresh water oozes from the banks of the sea at low tide. There are other more or less permanent water-supplies in the wadys, espepecially after rains-e. g., in Wadys Gudheirah, Garaiyeh, Layaneh, at Ras es Sat, and elsewhere. There were cisterns formerly at Wady Maghara (in the peninsula), and, as Brugsch thought, a great reservoir made by a dam across the deep valley. We saw a number of reservoirs thus formed in the south country, and water standing in pools in two wadys of the desert. In a passage in Numbers xxi, 18, we even read of the children of Israel digging a well.

The whole region in the peninsula and the desert north is sufficiently forlorn and forbidding, in parts "a great and terrible wilderness." After a journey through this region with various détours, undertaken with special reference to the conformity of the narration to the region, and on the constant lookout for water, pasturage,

space of about twelve miles by twenty, the southernmost being not much more than fifteen miles from the desert. Within that entire space there is perhaps not one per manent dwelling now.

and the means of subsistence, the writer found that conformity much more striking, even, than he had anticipated. He reached substantially the same conclusion with Wellsted, that with sufficient care there is "no reason why there should have been a lack of water," ordinarily—although at times great straits must occur-but that the grand and constant difficulty would have been to find a supply of food. This difficulty seems insuperable. One can not conceive how even the genius of Napoleon could have contrived under the circumstances to provide a year's subsistence for such a mixed multitude, had they been but a fifth of the estimated number. And the writer's conclusion was that, in this respect, quite as much as in any other, the narrative is singularly consistent, in indicating only occasionally a lack of water, and extraordinary supplies, but in asserting the continuance of a supernatural supply of food through almost the entire time and journey, namely, from the wilderness of Sin "till they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan."

S. C. BARTLETT.

THE ENGLISH HOUSE OF LORDS.

In modern times all civilized communities have employed representative institutions as the ordinary machinery of legislation and finance, and all have adopted, with necessary modifications, the form of the English House of Commons. Most communities, too, have thought it expedient to commit legislation to the debate and decision of two Chambers; while supply, i. e., the distribution of financial burdens, has been left to the discretion of one Chamber, and always to that Chamber which more directly represents the popular element in the machinery of government, in imitation of the British House of Commons. It is now known that this House, which has been justly named the Mother of Parliaments, came into existence in order that an equitable system of assessment should be established; that it speedily assumed the function of criticising the demands which the Crown made on the subject; that at an early date it made the grant of supply contingent on the redress of grievances; and that, two centuries after it was called into being, it adopted the practice of drawing up its demands in the form of laws. But no one has discovered the period at which it arrogated the privilege of granting supplies, and affirmed that its grants only were exigible by the Crown. It is certain that at an early date the three estates, the Church, the Lords, and the Commons, taxed themselves. But we do not know what were the circumstances under which the Commons were allowed to tax the other two orders, or, at least in the case of the clergy, to make their grants invalid without the assent of the lower House.

But, though modern civilization has copied with greater or less exactness the constitution of the House of Commons, no political society has imitated the English House of Lords. An attempt was made to introduce an hereditary Chamber in some of the American colonies, but the purpose failed. Ready as communities of British

origin are to copy or preserve the institutions of the country from which they are sprung, none of them has been willing to allow that the eldest male representative of certain families shall, irrespectively of any qualification but that of birth, be possessed of the inalienable right of legislating for the rest of his fellow countrymen, or, in technical language, be legally entitled to a writ of summons to Parliament, and be legally competent, in conjunction with a majority of others in the same condition, to reject the financial measures of the lower Chamber, and to exercise a wholly irresponsible control over all other legislative acts. Before the fiction that the sovereign can do no wrong was firmly established, English kings were made liable to all the consequences of misgovernment. No nation in Europe has so frequently made war upon and deposed its kings as the English has. Long before the great civil war it got the name of the disloyal nation. Since the doctrine of ministerial responsibility has been established, the Crown has apparently been more secure. But the first two Georges were seriously endangered by external enemies, and during the long reign of George III there were occasions on which the Crown was alarmingly imperiled by domestic discontent. At the present moment no one knows what the temper of the English people is, or may be, toward the ruling dynasty. It may be fervid; but social observances prove nothing, and may mask what is wholly unexpected.

It is quite certain that the English House of Lords could never have ventured on using the privileges which it claims. By the theory of its constitution it can reject, at its discretion, any measure, however urgent, which the administration and the lower House, representing the popular will, may affirm, and do so persistently, in defiance of repeated acts of the other legislative body. It claims to be the court of appeal from all other courts in which civil rights are adjudged, and for a long time it actually revised legal decisions by party votes. Though the privilege has long been disused, it claims not only to be irresponsible, but to coerce criticism, and to chastise those who dispute its pretensions. Its members can evade the consequence of civil actions, and can demand to be tried by their own order, for the most part, if they become liable to criminal procedure. Since the Lords succeeded in securing that members of their own body should be arraigned before the whole of the Lords, only one peer has been capitally convicted; though it has been said that, had they not been triable by their own relations only, many more would have been put in peril. Till recently it was not neces