INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN EGYPT, ARABIA PETRAEA...

INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN EGYPT, ARABIA PETRAEA AND THE HOLY LAND by John Lloyd Stephens, edited by Victor Wolfgang von Hagen (Chronicle: $15.95, illustrated). Originally published in 1837, this narrative ranks among the first American best-sellers: It sold a staggering 21,000 copies in two years (the population of the United States was barely 20 million at the time), far outstripping the work of Stephens’ contemporaries: Poe, Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau. The modern reader may wonder just what all the hoopla was about, as “Incidents” is a rather straightforward account of a lengthy ramble from Alexandria to the Second Cataract of the Nile, through the Sinai Peninsula (Arabia Petraea) and parts of Israel, Jordan and Lebanon. In one of the more entertaining sections, Stephens casts a piously jaundiced eye at the pilgrimage sites in Jerusalem that had been turned into tourist attractions. After viewing the dubious relics of the Shrine of the Holy Sepulcher, he concludes, “It would be far better for Christianity that it had remained forever locked up in the hands of the Turks, and all access had been denied to Christian feet.”