In 1865 the Italian traveller Giovanni Visconti reported (1872: 313) that while at Aqaba he saw:
Close to our tents, planted over a tumulus of scrap metal and sand, a stone of about 20 cm, broken and placed sideways marks the grave of a stranger. W. PLUNT USA 1857 It is the grave of an American who died of dysentery at Aqabah. They said that the relatives came a few years ago to look for the body to take him to America, but as far as they dug they found nothing.
William Parsons Lunt
Thanks to Andrew Oliver, we can now identify this American as William Parsons Lunt, a graduate of Harvard and a renowned Massachusetts clergyman. He died at Aqaba on the Great Desert Route from Cairo via Aqaba to Petra a month before his 52nd birthday. He is known from other reports which allow us to identify two travelling companions in what we may call the Lunt Party. In one report we are told he “… travelled with a young Scotchman and his tutor” (Bausman 1861: 171). The same report later refers to “the faithful Scotchman nursing [Lunt] as best he could. Just before he died, he pressed the hand of his friend and begged him not to desert him, as he would die soon” (Bausman 1861: 171). The ‘Scotchman’ is almost certainly Williamson Shoolbred of Dunfermline in Fife. He had been in business before studying at Edinburgh University, was ordained as a minister shortly afterwards, spent much of his life as a Presbyterian missionary in India and in 1888 was elected Moderator of the Church of Scotland. He was 30 in 1857. The second – probably also a Scot, is simply named as ‘B. Hinshaw’ and seems to be Shoolbred’s tutor. Lunt died on 21 March 1857 and accounts of the burial state that the other westerners there were Americans, English (i.e. British) and French. In short, the Lunt Party was accompamnied by that time by one or more other parties. In addition to Lunt’s two Scottish companions, we can identify three Englishmen (Cave, Cave and Lessey), at least one American (Rev. Dowdney) and at least one Frenchman (not named). So potentially at least seven westerners in this Lunt Group. They all stayed to witness the burial but – as they were already busily engaged in preparations to move, they then set off for Petra that same day. This last is important. It is natural to assume that the Lunt Group is one of the two other groups we know from various sources to have reached Petra independently on 2 April 1857. Neither group seems to have included any French travellers but it is likely the Lunt Group is one of these two.
East of Jordan 