and the places on the east side of the sea, those at which the Israelites touched in their travels, and are named above, were so far north that there is no ground for doubting that the passage was where, and as I have stated that it was. I am sensibly aware of the great difficulty of locating with precision and certainty most of the places mentioned in the Mosaic record. No two maps yet published agree precisely in the location of the mountains, valleys, and deserts threaded and traversed by the Israelites. Then, maps are published, attached to books and sent forth to the world in connection with the writings of travelers whose descriptions of country disagree, essentially, with the maps accompanying their notes. Thence, at once, arises a difficulty not always easily satisfactorily settled in one's own mind, which is this: to which of the two shall credence be given-the map or the statements of the traveler?

SEC. 7. In confirmation of the foregoing I would state that before me is the geographical description of the country about the head of the Red Sea and north and west of it; the notes were taken on the spot by Dr. Shaw. He, in describing the different roads between Cairo and the Red Sea, and in alluding to the north road, which is the most direct one between Cairo and Suez, says the Mocattee mountains, at present called the Attackah mountains, the eastern terminus of which is a little south of Suez, run parallel with this northern road, "and the desert of the Egyptian Arabia, which lies all the way open to the land of the Philistines, on the north." Also, is before me one of the most popular maps of our times; on this map are two ranges of mountains north of the latitudinal line of Suez and of the Attackah, and west of the longitudinal line of the head of the Gulf. Then, this map locates the Attackah mountains several miles to the south of the direct road running from Cairo to Suez. Hence, one travels over the road and says that near, on his right hand is the broken ridge of the Mocattee, and on his left is an open country for very many miles distance. The other silently, but just as emphatically,

says that far to the right of the road lies the unbroken Attackah mountains, and all the way on the left hand lies the desert of the Egyptian Arabia, extending to the land of the Philistines, and traversed by two lofty ranges of mountains. Thus do the most reliable authorities, from which data has to be gleaned, disagree. In coming to the conclusions which I have, and have herein before expressed, I gave greatest credence to the testimony of those who saw what they described; but some of them ought to have given us statements of some things which they saw, and could, and probably would, if their attention had not been diverted and directed to less important matters by the force of their theological prepossessions. I will now take up and examine some of the objections that have been, and will be again, raised against positions which I have taken in this and the last two preceding Chapters.!

CHAPTER XIV.

MOSES THE ISRAELITES-THEIR TRAVELS FROM PI-HAHIROTH TO MARAH, CONCLUDED.

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"And the Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward; but lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it; and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea. * And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left. And the Lord said unto Moses, stretch out thine hand over the sea, that the waters may come again upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and upon their horsemen. And the waters returned, and covered the chariots and the horsemen, and all the hosts of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them; there remained not so much as one of them. And Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore."

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[Ex. XIV: 15-30.

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SECTION 1. It will be objected in the future, as it has been in the past, that the vast numbers of the children of Israel, given in the record, could have moved from before Pi-hahiroth, up the beach, over the bare shoals, and escaped from the Egyptians across the sea, in the short space of time in which the record says that they passed through the Red Sea; also be objected, that there was on the shoals at full tide, water of sufficient depth and breadth to have received, and then overwhelmed and drowned the Egyptians. In a former Chapter I stated that in order that numbers should agree with facts, the numbers given in the record, both as to the Israelites and the Egyptians, must be greatly reduced from what they stand at in the record. I need add but very little to the arithmetical demonstrations given, in

the Seventh Chapter to obviate this objection, as it relates to the children of Israel. It was clearly demonstrated there that the Mosaic record, in giving numbers, was enormously exaggerated that its statements were absolutely false. It was there shown that there could not have been as many persons who left Egypt with Moses as the record, by just construction, says that there were hundreds-by no possibility, otherwise, by no law of human propagation which has been operative since the earth was first peopled, could there have been three thousand souls, descendants of Jacob, and his "threescore and fifteen souls," who left Egypt with Moses, or crossed the Red Sea with him; hence, the objection relating to the Israelites, is without force-there was plenty of time and space for all the living descendants of Jacob to have crossed over without bustling, and without jostling each other.

SEC. 2. It ever has been, and it ever will be, a matter of necessity that when a story is based, and started out, on a falsehood, many more fabrications of character kindred with the first, must be told that the semblance of truth be kept up. In narrating the history of the descendants of Jacob, in the time of Moses, the Mosaic account starts out with fabulous numbers of the children of Jacob, and it awards to them, through their leader, great sagacity-shrewdness, power, and wisdom. In order to give a foe corresponding with the assumed and fictious proportions of the Israelites, the writer of the Pentateuch was compelled to create a fabulous Egyptian army, of gigantic proportions, for them to first baffle, then annihilate through the cunning and the superior sagacity of Moses and his Lord.

SEC. 3. No army of the magnitude which the Mosaic record, and the Jewish sacred writings, represent that the Egyptian forces, which went in pursuit of Moses and the Israclites, was by either of the Pharaohs ever collected in the valley of the Nile, equipped, put in motion, and marched eighty, or more, miles, for the purpose of capturing the Israelites; nor, for any purpose, whatever, in the short

space of time specified in the record, for this purpose-in less than two days. The statement of the question, as the record and the Jewish writings give it, is enough, without any argument, to set the seal of falsehood upon it. The record says Pharaoh made ready his chariot, and took his people with him: and he took six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt, and captains over every one of them; and he pursued after the children of Israel-the Egyptians pursued after them, with all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh, and his horsemen, and his army, and overtook them encamping by the sea, beside Pi-hahiroth, before Baal-zephon. By the geography of that country the nearest point of the Red Sea to the place of rendezvous for the army of Pharaoh was about eighty miles; and if the Israelites diverged from the direct line to reach the sea before Baal-zephon, then, just so much as was added to the distance by that divergence of theirs, just so much must be added to the distance traveled by the Egyptians to overtake the Israelites.

SEC. 4. Although the record shows that in this fabulous army of a fabled Pharaoh there were horsemen, likewise footmen, the writer, else the revisers, of these five books of Moses, omitted, designedly so, no doubt, giving the number of either the horsemen or of the footmen. These books, in their original form, were among, and part of, the sacred writings of the Jews. If the numbers of the horsemen and footmen had been given in the Pentateuch it would have astounded the faith of the christian believer in it-for this egregious falsehood, if it had been published, long ere this, the Pentateuch would have been stricken from the list of christian canonical books.

SEC. 5. Notwithstanding the suppression, by the hermaphrodite christian writers and translators, of the given numbers of the horsemen and footmen belonging to this fabulous army of Egyptians, Josephus, the Jewish historian, was more honest in transcribing the old records. He gives the numbers, which, and as, he copied from the sacred