and threatening an imminent repetition of the stony avalanche which has filled the bed of the stream with Titanic boulders and inextricable débris. Among these the pathway winds and climbs as best it can. Here and there a stunted palm tree, or a diminutive acacia, relieves the stony desolateness. An occasional spring refreshes the hot and weary traveller, and preserves the little rill from annihilation. A new plant or flower, or a curious fossil may occasionally be picked up, and a few mysterious inscriptions may be seen. Throughout its length of six or seven miles it is a scene of vast and wild desolation, utterly inconceivable by those who have not seen it, utterly indescribable by those who have.

A short distance beyond the summit of the pass the peaks of Sinai rise into view. We had long been looking for them, with an intensity of feeling that imposed silence upon us all, and that deepened into awe, when we really saw the mountain that God had touched, and from which He had spoken. Photographs had made me acquainted with the face of Horeb, and I at once recognized its pillared peaks with an almost startling familiarity.

We descended from Nûkb Hâwy upon a large plain, which gradually opened before us. It is about two miles in length, and three quarters of a mile in average width. It is grandly framed in lofty mountains; the range which we had just crossed formed its northern end, receding a little, so as to form a large space at its north-north-west corner. Its western side is the Jebel Ghubsheh; its eastern the Jebel Fureiâ, a mountain plateau lying in the angle formed by the plain and the Wâdy Sheikh; the edge next the plain extending to the point is called the Jebel Sena, probably a tradition of the old name Sinai. The southern end of the plain is formed by the almost perpendicular cliffs of Râs Sufsâfeh, the Horeb of Scripture, extending right across it, and rising from it to the height of 1500 feet. About the middle of the plain is a watershed, one part of it sloping gently down to the north, the other to the south or south-east. This is the plain Er-Râhah, the plain of rest.' And the first view of it strongly excited the feeling that Dr. Robinson describes. We could none of us resist the conviction, that here, sequestered from the world, and as in the mighty nave of a cathedral, a temple not made with hands,' the host of Israel stood before God, the awful pile of Horeb being the altar upon which the Divine glory rested. Of course this was matter of mere impres

sion, but we could not resist it. Our previous reading had led us to the conclusion, and our observation confirmed it; for nothing can be more perfect than the correspondence between the place and the history. The summit of Horeb can be seen from every part of the plain, so that the cloud which rested upon it would be visible to all the people. At the south-east corner is the broad opening of Wâdy Sheikh, from which also Horeb is visible; we may imagine it, therefore, also covered with the tents of Israel.

The mountain mass of Sinai, of which Râs Sufsâfeh is only the northern end, corresponds in shape and area to the plain ErRahah. Roughly speaking, it is rectangu lar, its southern end being a little the broader, and having its corners rounded. It is about the same average width as the plain, and perhaps a little longer. It stands a little more to the west, so that the boundary lines of the mountain are not exactly a continuation of the boundary lines of the plain. Thus, on the eastern side of the mountain, the opening of the narrow Wâdy Deir, also called the Wady Shu'eib, or Valley of Jethro, in which the Convent of St. Katherine stands, is included within the southern end of the plain, from which the path to the convent leads in a straight line. A similar valley, the Wâdy Lejâ, -a tradition, possibly, of Jethro's daughter, forms the western boundary of Sinai. This is entered from Er-Râhah by turning a little to the right. Tue Wâdy Lejâ divides the isolated mass of Sinai from the irregular and more lofty range of Jebel Katherine Jebel Katherine itself being to the southwest of Sinai. In the Wâdy Lejâ the Convent of El-Arba'în stands, whose gardens of fruit-trees and cypresses relieve the desolateness of the scene and mourn over it. At the southern end of Sinai these two side valleys are connected by a broad, irregular, and rugged valley, the Wâdy Sebayeh; and as this valley is commanded by Jebel Mousa, Ritter and others have supposed that this was the place of the encampment, and that Jebel Mousa was the mountain of Divine manifestation. This is not impossible, but for many reasons it is improbable. It is much rougher and more broken than Er-Râhah, and much less convenient for the encampment of a great multitude, who would have to spread out laterally. It is much more difficult of access, only one or two narrow valleys, little more than mountain passes, leading to it; nor is it easy to conceive why the people should have turned away from the broad, level plain Er-Râhalı,

and the wide opening of the Wâdy Sheikh, | to reach a camping-ground in every respect inferior, and even less impressive. The top of Jebel Mousa, moreover, where Moses communed with God, would, contrary to the statement of the narrative, have been visible to all the people, and their idolatry and dancing would have been seen by Moses at every step of his descent. Nor is there any possibility of the people 'removing and standing afar off,' nor is there any brook that descended out of the mount,' as there is at Sufsâfeh. The mountain itself, moreover, does not overhang the plain, but is protuberant and broken, from the top to the bottom. The only reason for the theory is the gratuitous supposition that Jebel Mousa was the mountain of Divine manifestation to the people, a supposition which really perplexes and confuses the narrative. To understand the narrative of law-giving, it must be borne in mind that there are two principal summits of Sinai, Ras es-Sufsâfeh at its northern, and Jebel Mousa at its southern extremity. The former rises like a castellated wall, crowned by three principal turrets or peaks, from the plain Er-Rahah. The latter is not seen from the plain, being upwards of two miles behind Râs Sufsâfeh. All the conditions of the history are fulfilled, if we suppose that it was Jebel Mousa to which Moses ascended to commune with God, out of sight of the people; and that it was Râs Sufsafeh upon which the Divine glory was manifested to the people, and from which the ten words' of Sinai were spoken in their hearing.

The sun was setting as we descended upon the plain from the Nûkb Hâwy, and a flush of wondrous crimson clothed the front of Horeb with fire; this rapidly faded into a dusky twilight brown; then the moon arose on the south-east across the Jebel Fureiâ, and the whole scene was gradually touched and lighted by its pale radiance, until it ultimately rested in a luminous silver grey, which, by the time that we reached Horeb, suffused the whole masss in solemn splendour. At that moment, singularly enough, some light, fleecy clouds upon its top assumed the form of rays shooting upward, as if some faint lingerings of the olden glory still streamed from it. And thus we rode across the plain, scarcely a single feature altered, where for twelve months the Hebrews were encamped, where they heard the sound of the awful trumpet, and the voice of God, and saw the mountain 'altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire.'

Almost unconsciously we fell apart, that we might surrender ourselves to the thoughts and feelings which the almost awful solitude of this moonlight approach to Sinai inspired. The cleft face of Horeb looked down grandly and majestically, just as 3,000 years ago it did, upon the scene of the people's fear and vows; the scene also of their licentious idolatry. And there down its eastern side Moses, with the tables of the Law in his hands, descended from Jebel Mousa, and heard the riotous shouting and singing.

Proceeding up the Wâdy Deir on the east side of Horeb, we at length reached the Convent of St. Katherine, more strictly of the Transfiguration, which is about a mile up the valley, which it fills. The awful buttresses of Jebel Mousa, a thousand feet high, overhang it, and look into every corner of it. The convent itself is 5,000 feet above the level of the sea. We thundered long and loudly at the door, but no one answered: it seemed a dwelling of the dead. At length a monk appeared at a narrow loop-hole, in the upper part of the building, and, after a while, a second, upon the parapet of the roof. It being an hour or more after sunset, we were refused admission; the vociferations of our Arabs, the arguments of our dragoman, and our own loudly-expressed remonstrances notwithstanding. In vain we proffered our letter from the Patriarch at Cairo; in vain we told them that we had made a forced march of some fourteen hours in order to spend Sunday in the convent; in vain we told them that, having sent our tents round by the Wâdy Sheikh, they could not arrive before noon the next day, that one of of our number was unwell, that we had but little provision, and no bedding. The holy brotherhood were inflexible: they would throw us down coverlids; they would give us bread and olives; they would even admit us into a kind of garden-court, where we might make a fire, and where the stones were not quite so hard, and where, if we preferred it to sleeping, we might have access to the convent garden and walk among its olives and cypress trees: but admission to the convent itself was impossible. We were very angry at first, but soon adjusted ourselves to the situation, and ultimately made ourselves very comfortable; the romance of the circumstance giving a zest to our enjoyment, and an indelibility to the memory of it, which none of us would willingly forego. Our Arabs soon made a fire, and cooked a dinner of such as they had. The coarse brown bread of the monks was very grateful, their olives very nauseous,

'holy ground,' and, like Moses, we had to 'put our shoes off our feet,' before we might enter it.

After breakfast we saw the library, which consists chiefly of printed books, some portions of them comparatively modern: amongst them the Lexicon of Suidas, a fine edition of Chrysostom, and editions of the Greek fathers. No doubt the library contains also some very precious MSS., were it possible to secure for some competent scholar a thorough examination of them. In the archbishop's room, which was comfortably furnished and hung with portraits, we inspected the celebrated golden MS. of Theodosius, a minute description of which is given in the Athenæum of Nov. 12, 1864. It is written on vellum in letters of gold, and very beautifully illuminated. We saw also an exquisite microscopic psalter of the same period, said to have been written by a lady: the characters are so small that they cannot be read without a magnifying glass. From the library we went to the charnelhouse in the garden, near which we had unwittingly slept. We crept into it through a low door and came upon a ghastly array of skulls and bones. When a monk dies, his body is put into a separate chamber until it is decomposed. The skeleton is then taken to pieces, and the bones are arrayed in fanciful and horrid symmetry - the skulls in one pile, the thigh bones in another, the ribs in another. In a corner is the grim squatting skeleton of a celebrated anchorite, who was found in his cell with bent head and clenched hands, conquered in his lonely wrestle with death. A crimson gilt cap covered his ghastly head, and an ornamented cloth was thrown over his dried-up bones.

Close to the church, the one wall apparently touching the other, is a Mahometan mosque, erected, according to a MS. found in the library by Burckhardt, in the fourteenth century, the effect probably of fear in the days of Mussulman power. It is now scarcely ever used, and only when some Mahometan of rank visits the convent. It is strange to see the crescent of its minaret glittering within a few feet of the Christian cross. Mahomet is said to have visited the convent when a camel driver, and in the after days of his prophetical power he commended the pious monks to the forbearance and protection of his followers. A mosque and a church are in like conjunction on the top of Jebel Mousa.

As it is approached by daylight from the plain of Er-Rahah, the appearance of the convent in that wild mountain solitude is

very striking; its vast, irregular, prison-like buildings filling the entire valley, the dark cypresses of the garden contrasting with the light green of the olive-tree, and with the bright blossom of the almond-tree, where all else is sterility.

We were not sorry, after lunch, to regain possession of our tents, which had been pitched at the foot of Horeb at the entrance to the Wady Deir, close by Jethro's well. There we spent the rest of this memorable Sunday, and after a short tent service we enjoyed a quiet and thoughtful evening. It is not often in a lifetime that the religious, heart is subjected to such influences.

We had now reached the farthest point of our wanderings; - henceforth every footstep would be homewards.

The next morning we ascended Jebel Mousa, which, according to Dean Stanley, is 7,564 feet above the level of the sea. The ascent commences just above the convent. It is steep, but not difficult, and is facilitated in several places by broken steps, the remains of a rough staircase, said to have been made by the Empress Helena. A monk from the convent was our guide. One or two servants accompanied us, carrying coffee for our refreshment at the topa provision which we greatly scorned at the outset, but upon which we afterwards looked more favourably. We soon reached the 'Ain-el-Jebel, or mountain spring, a fresh clear fountain, with maiden's hair fern clustering beautifully round it. A little farther, and we came to a small chapel, where we rested while the monk burned incense. It is dedicated to the Virgin; the legend thereof being, that once upon a time the convent was so infested with fleas that the moaks abandoned it. On the place where the chapel stands they were met by the Virgin, who, to induce them to return, promised that henceforth their tormentors should be excluded from the convent. The monks accepted the conditions, and ever since, it is said, the convent has been as free from fleas, as, through the saintly efficacy of St. Patrick, Ireland is free from toads. This chapel was erected in commemoration of the vision and the miracle. Our own experience, however, furnished a dubious corroboration of the latter, —either the miracle is in a condition of damaged efficacy, or it does not extend to travellers.

About half-way up we passed through a cleft of the mountain under two archways, distant from each other about ten minutes' walk. At these, in the good old times, monks used to stand to confess all pilgrims, a process necessary to enable their passage.