being supplied with an abundant spring of water. Its natural position, as well as art, rendered it a fortress of importance in the desert. He represents the people as rich, civilized, and peaceable; the government as regal, but the chief power as lodged in a minister selected by the king, who had the title of the king's brother. Syllaeus, who betrayed Elius Gallus, appears to have been a minister of this description. The next mention that occurs of the trade of Petra is in the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, the date of which, though uncertain, there is good reason to fix in Nero's reign. According to this work, Leuke Kome, at the mouth of the Elanitic Gulf, was the point of communication with Petra, the capital of the country, the residence of Malachus, the king of the Nabathians. "Leuke Kome, itself, had the rank of a mart in respect to the small vessels which obtained their cargoes in Arabia, for which reason there was a garrison placed in it, under the command of a centurion, both for the purpose of protection, and in order to collect a duty of twenty-five in the hundred." In the reign of Trajan, Idumea was reduced into the form of a Roman province, by one of his generals; after this time it not does fall within our plan to notice it, except merely to state, that its subjection does not seem to have been complete or permanent, for during the latter empire, there were certainly sovereigns of this part of Arabia, in some degree independent, whose influence and alliance were courted by the Romans and Persians, whenever a war was about to commence between these two powers.