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Laborde is the first traveller whose visit importunities to remain the night, we to the Wâdy Megârah is recorded. He and started by moonlight for our encampment almost all travellers speak of its copper in the Wady Mokatteb, two hours distant. mines. Mr. Bonar goes so far as to say that The ride was very grand, almost solemn in he picked up here some specimens of cop- its natural magnificence, its dim solitude, per ore. Major Macdonald distinctly af- and its manifold associations; its excitement firms that, although copper may be found in being heightened by just a soupçon of peril the peninsula, and indications of old cop- from marauding Arabs, of whose camp-fires per mines are found near Surâbit-el-Khar- we occasionally got a glimpse. We reached dim-there is none in the Wâdy Megârah. our encampment in safety, however, where The mines produce only turquoise, and are we found our servants wondering what had now, according to Major Macdonald, the become of us. only turquoise mines, that are wrought, in the world.

Some of the excavations from which the Wady derives its name are very extensive, and very ancient. Among the specimens of turquoise which Major Macdonald showed us, was one, polished, as large as a pigeon's egg which, had the colour been good, would have been among turquoises what the.Koh-i-noor is among diamonds.

Unable, from the effects of his illness, to accompany us himself, Major Macdonald kindly sent his cavass to show us the inscriptions near the mines, said to be antecedent to the time of Moses. We clambered a considerable height up the side of the northern mountain, until we came to the entrance of the principal cavern, which some of our party explored. It is a vast excavation, the roof of which is supported by a series of pillars. The chief inscriptions are near the entrance of this cavern: they consist of hieroglyphics, monograms and sentences, -some in Cufic, some in Greek characters, and of roughly drawn figures and cartoons, apparently relating to mining operations; most of which have been copied and published in Europe. Mr. Bartlett gives drawings and descriptions of three of the principal. According to Lepsius, the hieroglyphics belong to the period of the earliest Egyptian monuments, and represent the triumphs of Pharaoh over his enemies. One of the cartouches is said to be that of Cheops, the builder of the Great Pyramid, 200 years before Abraham.

One reason assigned by Major Macdonald, why the Israelites were not likely to have come by the Nûkb Bûdrah, seemed to have in it some force- viz., that a strong Egyptian guard was was always stationed near the mines. Moses, who was minutely familiar with the district, would hardly, therefore, have exposed the Israelites to their possible attack. This reasoning would have almost equal force, applied to the route from the sea to the entrance of the Wady Feirân, above suggested.

Resisting Major Macdonald's hospitable

In the morning we retraced our steps some way in order to examine the inscriptions which we had passed without recognition in the dim moonlight. The Wady Mokatteb, or Written Valley,' is the chief locality of the Sinaitic inscriptions; they occur in great numbers on the sandstone cliffs, and at no great height. The sides of the valley are low, broken, and irregular, having a background of granite peaks. Many of the cliffs have fallen, and the inscriptions are found upon their fragments. In some parts of the valley, the rocks are thickly covered with them; in others, they occur more scantily. The number of the whole is not so great as we had anticipated. Lord Lindsay and Dr. Robinson speak of thousands; 'Lepsius of immense numbers.' Dean Stanley says that they exist at the most by hundreds or fifties.' Our observations confirm the lower estimate. They are almost all written upon the surface of the soft sandstone: very few are found upon the harder granite, and these are but slightly scratched.

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These remarkable inscriptions are found in various parts of the Sinaitic peninsula, chiefly about Mount Serbal, and extend eastwards as far as Petra; they are found on Serbâl itself, but not on Jebe! Mousa. They were first mentioned by Cosmas Indicopleustes, who visited Sinai in A. D. 518, who speaks of them as being then ancient. Pococke gave specimens of them. buhr visited the peninsula for the special purpose of examining them, but by the mistake of his guide was taken to Surâbitel-Khârdim. Subsequent travellers have copied and published the principal of them, especially Burckhardt in 1816, Gray in 1820, and Lepsius in 1845. They consist of inscriptions in the Sinaitic character, with some few in Arabic, Greek, and Latin; rude drawings of animals of all kinds, chiefly asses, horses, dogs, and ibexes, many of them in such grotesque forms as to render it impossible that they could have had any serious ineaning; crosses of all kinds, chiefly + and

standing usually at the beginning of

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inscriptions. Scarcely any of them require either ladder or scaffolding of any kind; the highest might have been written, as Dean Stanley suggests, by one man standing upon the shoulders of another.

Various theories of their origin and character have been propounded. Cosmas and his fellow-travellers affirmed that they were Hebrew in character and origin. Professor Beer thought them the passing records of Christian pilgrims - this is also the opinion of Lepsius. Professor Tuch thinks them the work of Pagans, either pilgrims or residents. Ritter connects them with the idolatrous worship of the Amalekites. Mr. Forster has labored very hard to prove them contemporary records of the Israelites. Dean Stanley, mainly from the occurrence of the numerous crosses, can hardly imagine a doubt that they are the work for the most part of Christians, whether travellers or pilgrims.' Chevalier Bunsen thinks that they are of mixed origin, — Pagan, Jewish, and Christian,which is probably nearest the truth. In 1839, Dr. Beer of Leipsic constructed an alphabet for the interpretation of the Sinaitic char'acter, which is given by Bunsen in his Table of Semitic Alphabets,* and with such success that Professor Tuch could not alter a single letter. He tested the inscriptions on the assumption that the alphabet would resemble the Phoenician, and that the language would be a dialect of the Arabic; and everywhere he found good Arabic, and good sense. After his death, Professor Tuch applied it to above two hundred additional inscriptions, and with equal success. The results of their investigation arethat the dialect is Arabic, with some peculiarities of form; that the inscriptions are Pagan, with some Christian intermixed; that they are the work of pilgrims, and consist chiefly of the greetings and names of travellers.

Leaving the Wady Mokatteb, we entered the Wady Feiran just where it opens westward to the sea. At this point we again struck the route of the Israelites. The entrance to the Wâdy Feirân is guarded by a singular sandstone cliff, shaped like a huge fortification, round the eastern side of which we wound. The valley is the most fertile, and next to the Wady Sheikh the most extensive, in the peninsula; we were about eight hours in traversing the first section of it. Like all the larger valleys of Sinai, it is very picturesque and grand. The section of it north of Parán is utterly sterile and desolate *Philosophy of History,' vol. i., p. 255.

dark mountains, on either side, of splintered granite and gneiss, deeply veined with porphyry, as if some Plutonic caldron had boiled over; and so linking the valley as to form long reaches, or inland lakes, - of course waterless, stern, torrid, and impressive in their molten sublimity. Unlike other mountainous countries, the bottoms of the Sinaitic valleys are flat, forming an angle with the sides, like that of water: they are alluvial deposits; that of the Wâdy Feirân is roughly corrugated by fierce torrents, and occasionally dotted with boulders. Our ride through the endless twistings of this waterless river was hot and wearying, almost distressing: the sun poured down his perpendicular streams of fire, fiercely radiated from the iron granite of the mountains, and the glassy sand of the valley; every breath of cooling breeze was inexorably shut out.

The water in our zemzemias was of a very doubtful character, but this did not prevent our having frequent recourse to them.

Here, if Feirân be Rephidim, the poor panting Israelites might well murmur for water our realization of their distress was very vivid. It is no presumption against this identification that, four or five hours farther on in the valley, abundant water flows through luxuriant groves of palmtrees.

We looked out very eagerly for the palm groves of Feirân. Our hope was long deferred, as one after another only the monotonous links of the huge granite chain presented themselves. At length we came in sight of the little village of Huseiyeh, to which some of our Arabs belonged. The people greeted us kindly, and gave us handfuls of the Liliputian apples of the Nûbk tree, which, to our parched and thirsty palates, were very grateful. The 'black tents of Kedar' now dotted the sides of the valley; we had exchanged the solitude and sterility of the desert for the fertile habitations of men. Half an hour later we reached our encampment at the entrance of the palm grove of Feirân: this extends two or three miles up the valley, and consists of an extensive plantation of three or four thousand palm trees, together with tamarisks, acacias, and other shrubs. It is the Bedouin Paradise.' No wonder that the old Amalekites tried to defend it. Its fertility is caused by a stream of water, some three or four feet broad, which flows from a perennial spring at the upper end of the valley, and after traversing the entire length of the grove is lost in a cleft of the rock a short distance below Huseiyeh.

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After some days' experience of the des- the conjunction of these four valleys, an ert, where a muddy sandpool and the stunt- extensive plain is formed, in the centre of ed ghurkud were unusual luxuries, the which there is a low broken hill, some sixty verdant grass beneath our feet, the thick or seventy feet in height, called the hill shrubbery of tamarisk and broom around Herĕrât. Upon this hill, according to the our tents, the feathery palm gracefully tradition, Moses stood while the battle of waving some fifty or sixty feet above Rephidim raged around it. Certainly no our heads, and, above all, the gentle music place could more perfectly correspond to of the bubbling brook at our tent door, the circumstances of the history. The grateful as the voice of home, were very de- Amalekites would naturally wish to defend licious. Life was everywhere luxuriant their fertile vale against the invasion of a and beautiful. Amid her countless nooks host like that of Israel. Concealing themand varieties of beauty, the earth has none selves, therefore, as they easily might, in perhaps more fascinating and fanciful than the sides of the mountains, and behind the this. It is a wilderness of tropical fertility, hill Herĕrât, they permitted the Israelites sequestered by rich and lofty mountains of to advance to the centre of the plain, and granite; a Happy Valley, where Rasselas then, bursting forth from their ambush, might have hoped for unsophisticated and attacked them both in front and rear. virtuous dwellers, hardly to be found, how- this way Moses would be able to ascend the ever, in the squalid huts and semi-savagery little hill,' as in the original it is emphatiof the Bedouins. To us, it was a place of cally called (an), and thus he would delicious repose, long and pleasantly to be command the entire field of battle. Here remembered. then we may picture to ourselves the wondrous, rod uplifted,— bâton serving as a standard to Joshua's army, and also a mute appeal to the God of battles; as the arms of the venerable law-giver grow weary, they are upheld by Aaron and Hur, and at length are supported by two stones for pillows. And from morning till evening, according to the firmness of the uplifted rod, the impetuous tide of battle swayed, swelling and breaking, and angrily dashing against the rocky pedestal upon which the sublime figure of Moses stood. After the victory the same rocky eminence would doubtless be an altar in the midst of this grand temple of nature, upon which sacrifices of thanksgiving would be offered in sight of all the people. It is now covered with the ruins of the ancient church and episcopal palace of Feirân, while round its base are ruins of the old ecclesiastical city,

Two other parties of travellers were already encamped in the palm grove. The flickering light of the camp-fires reflected from Oriental foliage, with groups of Arabs and camels reposing round them, and thrown into strong relief; the bright moon calmly shining above; the gurgling brook serenading us with its home music; the grand ranges of mountain on either side, crowned on the western side by the awful domes of Serbal, which almost overhang the valley, made the scene one of the most impressive and memorable of our journey. Nor were we without Arab music. The ministrel of the grove serenaded us with a most melancholy love ditty, sung to the accompaniment of a still more melancholy violin, of the rudest and most primitive construction.

We did not get much sleep, one noise or another disturbing us all the night. Notwithstanding this, before the morning, a hyæna from Mount Serbâl made free with the foal of a camel three days old, the bereaved mother of which carried me the next day.

At this junction of the sterile and fertile parts of the valley, there are two lateral valleys opening out of it like the transepts of a cathedral, each forming a cul-de-sac : that to the west, the Wâdy 'Aleiyat, is a wild picturesque glen, two or three miles in length, blocked up by the vast mass of Serbal; it is utterly sterile, and is little more than the rugged bed of mountain torrents. That to the east is shorter; it is simply a deep amphitheatre of mountains, a bellying out of the side of the valley. By

houses, chapels, and tombs. The mountains all round are honeycombed to the very summit with hermits' cells, and tombs.

P and F being cognate and interchangeable letters, Feirân and Parân are identical words. Feirân is the Phara of Ptolemy, from which in his day the entire district was called the Pharanitic Peninsula. It is most probably also the Parân of Scripture history and poetry, the El Parân to which Chedorlaomer and his allies chased the Horites of Mount Seir,' the Mount Parân' from which the Holy One came.' In this place Christian altars were once erected, and Christian worship was offered. These mountain echoes, that once reiterated the terrible sounds of battle, also responded to the voice of Christian song. These dark

and comfortless cells were once filled with living men, and witnessed all the strange tragedy of anchorite life, the struggle of human passion, the fervour of wrestling prayer, the unutterable desolateness of human solitariness, the weary weakness of sickness, the dark solitude of death. These hoary walls once felt the touch of human hands, and were sanctified by the holy worship of human hearts. Here lived Theodosius, the Monothelite Bishop of Feirân, who was excommunicated for his heresy. Here, too, the Tyrians once traded: so that all the interests of human life, all the play of human passion, were once vital here. Now, all is solitary and desolate; a few Bedouins wander about the place by day, the jackal and the hyæna roam over it at night.

Mount Serbâl is seen from Feirân in all its magnificence. It rises from its base in five great sections, blended together like the clustered columns of a cathedral: some one has happily compared it to a cluster of inverted stalactites, distinguished, but not parted, by deep ravines. The ascent is commonly made from Feirân; it is arduous, but not otherwise difficult. It occupies about four hours. Dean Stanley describes the view from the summit as very magnificent.

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of Sinai as the highest of all the mountains that are in that country;' but this is quite in accordance with his exaggerating habit: it is more applicable to Jebel Mousa than it is to Serbal, but is literally true of neither. Importance has been attached to the fact that the episcopal city of Parân existed prior to the time of Justinian; but this proves, not that Serbâl was Sinai, but only that the Wâdy Feirân was the most fertile spot in the neighbourhood of Sinai. Serbâl was undoubtedly a sacred mountain, and a place of religious pilgrimage, even prior to the Exodus. Its name points to the worship of the Phoenician Baal.

Further, it is clear from the narrative of Scripture, and is also implied by Josephus, that Rephidim was some distance from Sinai, certainly one day's march, probably more. Feirân is as near to Serbâl as the people could come, while it is at the least sixteen or eighteen hours distant from the modern Horeb. It is further urged that the plain Er Râhah, at the foot of Horeb, and the Wadys round the modern Sinai, are destitute of vegetation, and of the means of supporting a great multitude; and that Moses, who intimately knew the whole district, would naturally select for the place of their prolonged encampment the Wâdy Feirân, which abounds in luxuriant vegetation. To this it may be replied, that while Sinai is not so fertile as Feirân, it is by no means without vegetation and water; that after the victory at Rephidim, the resources of Feirân would be available for the people encamped on Er Râhah, and that, in all his movements, Moses was manifestly under the explicit guidance of Jehovah, and was not left to the simple dictates of his own unassisted judgment. If the history be true at all, the question can hardly be argued on the ground of mere natural probabilities. We are necessarily restricted to such intimations as are furnished by the sacred narrative. The place of the law-giving would doubtless be determined by a comparison of various considerations.

A most interesting and important question respects the identity of Serbâl with the mountain of the law-giving. This is very strenuously and elaborately maintained by Lepsius, Mr. Bartlett, Dr. Stewart, and others. Burckhardt, Dean Stanley, Dr. Wilson, and most modern travellers, more successfully contend for the modern Sinai. The Jewish traditions are in favor of Sinai, and we can hardly conceive of these as doubtful. The early Christian traditions of the time of Eusebius and Jerome down to Justinian are in favour of Serbâl. On the other hand, the church of Justinian was built at the foot of Jebel Mousa with the concurrence of the whole Christian world. Even the monks of Serbâl never thought of disputing the claims of Sinai; and these have been admitted by almost all later writers. The inscriptions which are found upon Serbâl, even to its summit, are adduced in its favour; but there is no proof that these are Israelitish in their origin: their strange character is presump-grove of Feirân, the nearest possible camption to the contrary. It is, moreover, al- ing-place, the actual base of the mountain most impossible to conceive of the Israel- cannot be seen at all. A turn of the Wâdy ites graving any inscription upon the holy 'Aleiyat at its entrance completely interand awful mount of God; besides, there cepts it, and, according to Dr. Stewart, it are inscriptions almost all over the penin- is five miles distant. The Wâdy 'Aleiyat sula. Josephus (Ant. iii. c. 5, § 1) speaks itself is a narrow ravine, little more than

It is conclusive against the claim of Serbâl, that there is no open space near its base where a host like that of Israel could encamp before the mount, and whence its its summit could be seen. From the palm

a rocky watercourse; it affords no convenience for the encampment of a multitude of people, and no possibility of their retiring afar off, according to the narrative, and at the same time maintaining their connection with the mountain. On the other hand, all the required conditions are fulfilled at Sinai with almost startling exactness.

Our way now lay up the Wâdy Feirân, and through the entire length of the palm grove, which extends for about three miles, the regal palm gradually giving place to the tamarisk and to the broom.

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This fairy grove was thickly peopled with the rude huts and the tents of the Bedouins, their flocks herding near them, and their children innocent of even a palm leaf, and brown as a chestnut, half curious, half fearful venturing to the side of the path, or hiding behind the foliage, to get a furtive glimpse of our white faces and wideawakes, as we passed. We were the strange objects there. The valley is richer as we ascend. A considerable accumulation of soil is fertilized by the living stream that runs through it; and even corn is grown in it; but lower down, around Parân, the conflicting torrents are too violent to permit such accumulation, —all débris from_the_mountains is entirely swept away. Dr. Lepsius speakes of the traces of an ancient lake in the higher part of the valley: these we did not see; but if his observation be accurate, it is important, as indicating the former fertility of it. Lakes in similar positions are frequent enough in Switzerland, and in the mountain districts of Wales and Yorkshire.

At the head of the Wâdy Feirân the valley is divided into two branches. The one bending to the cast is the Wâdy EsSheikh, the most extensive of the valleys of Sinai. From the head of the Wady Feiran, forming nearly a semicircle, it leads by a broad and easy way to the very foot of Horeb: this, doubtless, would be the route taken by the host of Israel. The valley bending to the west is the Wâdy Solâf; it is a continuation of the same sweep, but is less circular than the Wâdy Sheikh; bending round more abruptly, it forms, as it were, the flat side of a circle, which it would complete by opening into the Wady Sheikh near its termination at Horeb, did it not cease by running up into a kind of mountain ravine. The two valleys thus form a kind of irregular circle or ellipse, enclosing a plateau of low hills.

Leaving the Wady Feirân, we turned a little way down the Wâdy Sheikh, and then turning suddenly to the right struck

across the rocky plateau, in a direct line to Horeb. We had thus to cross, first the Wâdy Solâf on the other side of the pla teau, and then a grand range of mountains on the farther side of it, which stands like a vast cathedral screen before the inner sanctuary of Sinai. Fron the plateau this outer range of mountains is seen to great advantage, and over the lower parts of it glimpses of the summits of the inner mountains are obtained, among them of that of Jebel Mousa. On the right we had very fine distant views of the crown of Serbâl, always grand and imposing, from whatever point it is seen.

The vegetation of the Wâdy Feirân had given place to the rough sterile desert surface with which we had become familiar. The descent from the plateau into the desolate bed of the Wâdy Solâf was rough and steep; the valley itself seemed a region of slimepits and limekilns. It contains numerous graves, more numerous than are easely accounted for in such a place. Dr. Stewart * says that he saw here traces of a ruined town, of which this may have been the necropolis.

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The pass across this mountain breastwork of Sinai is the Nûkb Hâwy, or Windsaddle,' the most arduous and most magnificent in the peninsula. A rough camel track has been made among the huge boulders and débris of fallen granite, probably by the monks, to facilitate communication between Sinai and Feirân. If, as some suppose, this was the directer route to Sinai, taken by Moses and the elders, their way must have been rough indeed. Doubtless Moses had been long familiar with it.

We were about three hours in crossing, our camels laboriously following us. In some respects it is the grandest mountain pass that I have seen. It has no single spot of overpowering sublimity like some of the passes of the Alps, but it has a sustained magnificence of its own, for which it would be difficult to find a parallel. The path skirts no fathomless abyss, the traveller hangs over no toppling precipices; throughout, his way lies along the saddle of the mountain, and on a level with what in the rainy season must be a terrific torrent, but which now, owing to the long drought, is but a trickling and intermittent stream. The sublimity is above rather than below: wonderful granite peaks, rent, rugged and time-worn; piled-up granite masses, disintegrated, perilously balanced, and grotesque beyond all description, rise a thousand feet on either side, sometimes overhanging *The Tent and the Khan,' p. 121.

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