describes can be found in the inscription, and no single fact mentioned in the inscription is found in his description of it. It was as follows: One of the Sinaitic inscriptions of Petra is given in the "Zeitschrift der D. Morgenländischen Gesellschaft," ix. 230.] SINAI ᏢᎪᎡᎢ II. THE JOURNEY FROM CAIRO TO JERUSALEM. THE following extracts are either from letters, or from journals, written on the spot or immediately afterwards. Such only are selected as served to convey the successive imagery of the chief stages of the journey, or as contained details not mentioned by previous travellers. My object has been to give the impressions of the moment, in the only way in which they could be given, as the best illustrations of the more general statements elsewhere founded upon them. -- I. Departure from Egypt; Overland Route; First Encampment.-II. The Passage of the Red Sea. (1.) Approach to Suez. (2.) Suez. (3.) Wells of Moses.-III. The Desert, and Sand-storm.--IV. Marah; Elim.-V. Second Encampment by the Red Sea; "Wilderness of Sin." VI. Approach to Mount Serbal; Wâdy Sidri and Wâdy Feirân.—VII. Ascent of Serbal. VIII. Approach to Gebel Mousa, the traditional Sinai.-IX. Ascent of Gebel Mousa and Râs Sasâfeh.-X. Ascent of St. Catherine.-XI. Ascent of the Gebel-ed-Deir. XII. Route from Sinai to the Gulf of 'Akaba. (a) Tomb of Sheykh Saleh. (b) Wady Sayâl and Wâdy El 'Ain. HAZEROTH.-XIII. Gulf of 'Akaba; Elath. XIV. The 'Arabah.-XV. Approach to Petra.-XVI. Ascent of Mount Hor. XVII. Petra. KADESH. XVIII. Approach to Palestine.-XIX. Recollections of the First Day in Palestine. -XX. Hebron.-XXI. Approach to Bethlehem and Jerusalem.-XXII. First View of Bethlehem.-XXIII. First View of Jerusalem. EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS, ETC. I. DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT-OVERLAND ROUTE-FIRST ENCAMPMENT. Ir was too hazy to see anything in the distance,—even the Pyramids were but shadows. Soon the green circle of cultivated land receded from view, like the shores as you sail out to sea, and in an hour we were in the Desert ocean. Not, however, a wide circle of sand, but a wild waste of pebbly soil, something like that of the Plaine de Crau (near Marseilles), broken into low hills, and presenting nowhere an even horizon. But the remarkable feature was a broad beaten track, smooth and even, and distinctly marked as any turnpikeroad in England, only twice the width, and running straight as a railway or Roman road through these desert hills. It was a striking sight in itself, to see the great track of civilised man in such a region. One of the party said, that the only thing to which it could be compared was the high-road from Petersburg to Moscow. It was still more striking when you knew what it was, the great thoroughfare of the British empire, becoming yearly more important and interesting, as the course which so many friends have travelled, and will travel. Even the Exodus for that day waxed faint before it. And lastly, it was most instructive, as the only likeness probably which I shall ever see of those ancient roads, carried through the Desert in old times to the seats of the Babylonian and Persian Empires, to which allusion is made in the 40th chapter of Isaiah. In this comparatively level region, it is true, no mountains had to be brought low, nor valleys filled up; but it was literally "a high-way prepared in the wilderness:" and the likeness was only interrupted, not obscured, by the solitary stations and telegraphs which, at intervals of every five miles, broke the perfect desolation. It has hitherto run along our whole course. To-day, between heaps of stones-said by one of the dragomans to be the graves of Ibrahim Pasha's soldiers-which, as the heaps extend for miles and miles, with the utmost regularity, needs no remark, except as an instance of the extreme rapidity with which false local traditions spring up. They are really the "stones," the stumbling-blocks "cast 'up 1 Isa. xl. 3; lxii. 10. out of the way, and so left on each side of the road to mark it more distinctly. Nothing was more striking to me in our first encampment than the realisation of the first lines in Thalaba : : "How beautiful is night, A dewy freshness fills the silent air." There is the freshness without coldness, and there is the silence doubly strange as compared with the everlasting clatter of the streets and inns of Cairo, and the incessant sound of songs, and screams, and shocks of the boat upon the Nile; nothing heard but the slight movement amongst the Bedouin circles round their fires, and from time to time a plaintive murmur from the camels as they lie, like stranded ships, moored round the tents. II. THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA. (1.) Approach to Suez.-I have at last, as far as mortal eyes can see it, seen the passage of the Red Sea. It was about 3 P.M. yesterday, that as we descended from the high plain on which we had hitherto been moving, by a gentle slope through the hills, called, by figure of speech, the "defile" of Muktala, a new view opened before us. Long lines, as if of water, which we immediately called out to be the sea, but which was, in fact, the mirage; but above these, indubitably, the long silvery line of even hills-the hills of ASIA. Onwards we still came, and in the plain below us lay on the left a fortress, a tomb, and a fortified wall. This is 'Ajerûd, famous as the first great halting-place of the Mecca Pilgrimage; famous as the scene of Eothen's adventure; still more famous as being the only spot on the road which, by its name and position, can claim to be identified with any of the stations mentioned in the flight of the Israelites. It may possibly be Pi-hahiroth'. If it was so, then the low hills of Muktala, through which we descended, are Migdol, and Baal Zephon was Suez, which lay on the blue waters of the sea now incontrovertibly before us east and south; and high above the whole scene, towered the Gebel 'Attâka, the "Mountain of Deliverance," a truly magnificent range, which, after 1 Exod. xiv. 2, 9. Numb. xxxiii. 7, 8. "Pi-hahiroth " may be either-(1) in Hebrew, "mouth of caverns," as in the Vatican MS. of the LXX, Numb. xxxiii. 7, τὸ στόμα Εἰρώθ; or much more probably, (2) in Egyptian, "the grassy places," "Pi" being the Egyptian article; as in Alex. MS. of the LXX ἐπαύλεις. There is no appearance of verdure now, either at 'Ajerûd, nor appa rently at any corresponding spot in the Wady Tuârik, The name, however, may, after all, be derived from the name of the Saint, "Ajerûd," who is said to be buried in the tomb beside the fortress (Burton's Pilgrimage to Medineh, i. p. 230), unless, which is equally probable, the name of the Saint was invented to account for the name of the place. See like instances in Chapter VI. all, is the one feature of the scene unchanged and unmistakeable. Every theory of the passage combines in representing this as the impediment which prevented the return of the Israelites into Egypt. when Pharaoh appeared on their rear. It was this which "shut them in'." (2.) Suez.-This morning I stood on the flat roof of the house, and with Dr. Robinson's book in my hand, made out every locality. Somewhere within my view,-somewhere under that jagged mountain, -the greatest event before the Christian era must have taken place. Close under one's feet, were the sandy shoals all around the modern town of Suez,-over which they passed, according to one theory; further down the gulf opened the deep blue sea, with the Asiatic hills just visible on the Eastern side,-over which they passed, according to the other. It is the less necessary and the less possible to decide precisely, because the limits of the Desert in the previous route have evidently changed, since "the edge of the wilderness" was only a day's march from the sea; as the limits of the sea have also changed, since the time when it ran far up into the north. (3.) From the Wells of Moses ('Ayoun Mousa).—The wind drove us to shore and on the shore-the shore of Arabia and Asia-we landed in a driving sand-storm, and reached this place, 'Ayoun Mousa, the "Wells of Moses." It is a strange spot,-this plot of tamarisks with its seventeen wells,-literally an island in the Desert, and now used as the Richmond of Suez,-a comparison which chiefly serves to show what a place Suez itself must be. It is not mentioned in the Bible, but coming so close as it does upon any probable scene of the passage, one may fairly connect it with the song of Miriam. And now once more for the Passage. From the beach, within half an hour's walk from hence, the shore commands a view across the Gulf into the wide opening of the two ranges of mountains, the opening of the valley through which the traditional Exodus took place, and consequently the broad blue sea of the traditional passage. This, therefore, is the traditional spot of the landing, and this, with the whole view of the sea as far as Suez, I saw to-night; both at sunset, as the stars came out; and later still by the full moon-the white sandy desert on which I stood, the deep black river-like sea, and the dim silvery mountains of 'Attâka on the other side. These are the three features which are indisputable. You know the Straits of Gibraltar, the high mountains of Africa, the green swells of Europe, the straits which divide them. Such in their way are the 1 Josephus (Ant. II. xv. 3.) mentions "the mountain." 2 Exod. xiii. 20. 3 Sce Part I. p. 34. |