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ANCIENT CITY OF SPLENDOR. Petra, in Mountains of Edom, an Enchanting Place. Its Story Goes Back to Dawn of Human History. For Ages a Center of Luxury, Now Deserted and Silent• [National Geographic Society BuUetiru 1 The highlands east of the Jordan River are strewn with ruins marking the rise and fall of successive civiliza­tions— Semitic, Greek^ Roman, Christian, Mohammedan and Crusa­der. These ruins have been pre­served for the modern explorer by the tides of nomadic life, which have swept up from the Arabian desert; but at the southern end of this No Man’s Land, deep in the mountains of Edom, lies ^one of the strangest, most beautiful and most enchanting spots upon this earth— the Rock City? of Petra. Its story carries us back to the dawn of hu­man history. In the days of the Nabatheans, Petra became the central point to which the .caravans from the interior of Arabia, Persia and India came laden with all the precious com­modities of the East, and from which these commodities were distributed through Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean for even Tyre and Sidon derived many of their prec­ious wares and dyes from Petra. The Rock City was always to these regions and peoples what Rome wa to the Romans and Jerusalem b the Jews. Horites, Edomites, Nabatheans and Romans have all rejoiced and boasted in the posses­sion of this unique stronghold and most remarkable city of antiquity. THROUGH A STRANGE DEFILE. The entrance to the Rock City is the most striking gateway to any city on our p,lanet. It is a narrow rift or defile, bisecting a mountain of many Hijed sandstone, winding through the rock as though it was the most plastic of clay. This Sik, or defile, is nearly two miles long. Its j general contour is a wide semi- | circular swing from the right to the left, with innumerable short bends, having sharp curves and corners in its general course. The width of the Sik varies from twelve feet at its narrowest point to thirty-five or forty feet at other places. Where the gloomy walls ac­tually overhang the roadway and al­most shut out the blue ribbon o^ sky, it seems narrower, and per haps at many points above the, stream the walls do come closer than twelve feet. The heights of the perpendicular side cliffs have been j estimated at from 2 0 0 to 1 0 0 0 feet, j Heights, like distances, in this clear desert air are deceptive, but after | many tests and observations we are j prepared to say that at places th ey: are almost sheer for 300 to 400 feet, i Seen at morning, at mid-day, or at midnight, the Sik, the matchless entrance to a hidden city, is un­questionably one of the great glories that remain of ancient Petra. Along] its cool, gloomy gorge filed the cara- , vans of antiquity— from Damascusj land the east, from the desert, fromj Egypt and the heart of Africa.^ Kings, queens and conquerors all have marveled at its beauties and its strangeness. Wealth untold went in and out of it for centuries, and now, for more than 1300 years it has been silent and deserted. Carved in the face of the cliff, half revealed, half concealed in the growing shadows, is one of the larg­est, most perfect, and most beau­tiful monuments of antiquity— Pharaoh’s Treasury. Almost as perfect as the day it came from beneath the sculptor’s chisel, 1500 or 2 0 0 0 years ago, col­ored with the natural hues of the brilliant sandstone which added an indescribable element to the archi­tectural beauty, flanked and sur­mounted by the cliffs which had been carved and tinted in turn by the powers of nature, approached by the mysterious defile, it is almost overpowering in its effect.