Abstract
CAPTAIN BURTON has managed to make a wonderfully interesting and really valuable book out of his fortnight's visit to the ancient land of Midian, on the north-east side of the Red Sea, on and to the south of the Gulf of Akabah. Long ago he had good reason to believe that in this region gold was to be found, but only in March and April of last year was he able to test his surmise, under the auspices and at the expense of the Khedive. The result of this visit is that he is satisfied that there exists a real Ophir, a regular California, extensively worked in ancient times, and whose valuable product is probably not unknown to the tribes who haunt it at the present day. Not only gold exists there, but vast deposits of iron, with copper, tin, and other metals—in fact a welcome treasure-house for the impecunious Khedive. Capt. Burton has hopes that modern Midian, now almost a desert, may yet rival the ancient land from whose people the Israelites, in the exercise of their divine vocation, carried off “the gold and the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin, the lead.” Capt. Burton made a minute inspection of some of the ancient sites, and has a good deal to say on the archæology of the region, as well as its zoology, botany, and geology. But the book is not nearly all on the land of Midian. From the time that the author left Trieste for Alexandria and Cairo, by Suez to Midian, till his return, he saw many things on which, in his own digressive and parenthetical style, he has much to say that is worth listening to. Capt. Burton has just returned from another visit to Midian, and no doubt we shall soon have another work or an enlarged edition of the present.
The Gold-Mines of Midian and the Ruined Midianite Cities. A Fortnight's Tour in North-Western Arabia.
By Richard F. Burton. (London: Kegan Paul and Co., 1878.)
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The Gold-Mines of Midian and the Ruined Midianite Cities A Fortnight's Tour in North-Western Arabia . Nature 18, 38 (1878). https://doi.org/10.1038/018038a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/018038a0