Journal of a Tour in the Peninsula of Mount Sinai, in the Spring of 1816.

ABOUT the beginning of April 1816 Cairo was again visited by the plague. The Franks and most of the Christians shut them­selves up; but as I neither wished to follow their example nor to expose myself unnecessarily in the town, I determined to pass my time, during the prevalence of the disease, among the Bedouins of Mount Sinai, to visit the gulf of Akaba, and, if possible, the castle of Akaba, to which, as far as I know, no traveller has ever penetrated. Intending to pass some days at the convent of Mount Sinai, I procured a letter of introduction to the monks from their brethren at Cairo; for without this passport no stranger is ever permitted to enter the convent; I was also desirous of having a letter from the Pasha of Egypt to the principal Sheikh of the tribes of Tor, over whom, as I knew by former experience, he exercises more than a nominal authority. With the assistance of this paper, I hoped to be able to see a good deal of the Bedouins of the pen­insula in safety, and to travel in their company to Akaba. Such letters of recommendation are in general easily procured in Syria and Egypt, though they are often useless, as I found on several oc­casions during my first journey into Nubia, as well as in my travels in Syria, where the orders of the Pasha of Damascus were much slighted in several of the districts under his dominion.

A fortnight before I set out for Mount Sinai I had applied to the Pasha through his Dragoman, for a letter to the Bedouin Sheikh; but I was kept waiting for it day after day, and after thus delaying my departure a whole week, I was at last obliged to set off without it. The want of it was the cause of some embarrassment to me, and prevented me from reaching Akaba. It is not improba­ble that on being applied to for the letter, the Pasha gave the same answer as he gave at Tayf, when I asked him for a Firmahn, namely, that as I was sufficiently acquainted with the language and manners of the Arabs, I needed no further recommendation.

The Arabs of Mount Sinai usually alight at Cairo in the quarter called El Djemelye, where some of them are almost constantly to be found. Having gone thither, I met with the same Bedouin with whom I had come last year from Tor to Cairo; I hired two camels from him for myself and servant, and laid in provisions for about six weeks consumption. We left Cairo on the evening of the 20th of April, and slept that night among the ruined tombs of the village called Kayt Beg, a mile from the city. From this vil­lage, at which the Bedouins usually alight, the caravans for Suez often depart; it is also the resort of smugglers from Suez and Syria.

April 21st.—We set out from Kayt Beg in the course of the morning, in the company of a caravan bound for Suez, comprising about twenty camels, some of which belonged to Moggrebyn pilgrims, who had come by sea from Tunis to Alexandria; the others to a Hedjaz merchant, and to the Bedouins of Mount Sinai, who had brought passengers from Suez to Cairo, and were now re­turning with corn to their mountains. As I knew the character of these Bedouins by former experience, and that the road was perfectly safe, at least as far as the convent, I did not think it neces­sary this time to travel in the disguise of a pauper. Some few comforts may be enjoyed in the desert even by those who do not travel with tents and servants; and whenever these comforts must be relinquished, it becomes a very irksome task to cross a de­sert, as I fully experienced during several of my preceding jour­neys.

The Bedouins of Sinai, or, as they are more usually denomi­nated, the Towara, or Bedouins of Tor, formerly enjoyed the exclu­sive privilege of transporting goods, provisions, and passengers, from Cairo to Suez, and the route was wholly under their protec­tion. Since the increased power of the Pasha of Egypt, it has been thrown open to camel-drivers of all descriptions, Egyptian pea­sants, as well as Syrian and Arabian Bedouins; and as the Egyp­tian camels are much stronger, for a short journey, than those of the desert, the Bedouins of Mount Sinai have lost the greater part of their custom, and the transport trade in this route is now almost wholly in the hands of the Egyptian carriers. The hire of a strong camel, from Cairo to Suez, was at this time about six or eight Patacks, from one and a half to two Spanish dollars.

The desert from Cairo to Suez is crossed by different routes; we followed that generally taken by the Towara, which lies mid-way between the great Hadj route, and the more southern one close along the mountains: the latter is pursued only by the Arabs Terabein, and other Syrian Bedouins. The route we took is called Derb el Ankabye (ﺔﻴﺒﻘﻧﻌﻟﺍ ﺏﺭﺩ).

We proceeded on a gentle ascent from Kayt Beg, and passed on the right several low quarries in the horizontal layers of soft calcareous stone of which the mountain of Mokattam, in the neigh­bourhood of Cairo, is composed; it is with this stone that the splendid Mamelouk tombs of Kayt Beg are built. At the end of an hour, the limestone terminated, and the road was covered with flints, petrosilex, and Egyptian pebbles; here are also found spe­cimens of petrified wood, the largest about a foot in length. We now travelled eastward, and after a march of three hours halted upon a part of the plain, called El Mogawa (ﻪﻭﺎﻘﻟﺍ), where we rested during the mid-day heat. Beyond this spot, to the distance of five hours from Cairo, we met with great quantities of petrified wood. Large pieces of the trunks of trees, three or four feet in length, and eight or ten inches in diameter, lay about the plain, and close to the road was an entire trunk of a tree at least twenty feet in length, half buried in sand. These petrifactions are gene­rally found in low grounds, but I saw several also on the top of the low hills of gravel and sand over which the road lies. Several travel­lers have expressed doubts of their being really petrified wood, and some have crossed the desert without meeting with any of them. The latter circumstance is easily accounted for; the route we were travelling is not that usually taken to Suez. I have crossed this desert repeatedly in other directions, and never saw any of the petrifactions except in this part of it. As to its really being petri­fied wood there cannot be any reason to doubt it, after an inspec­tion of the substance, in which the texture and fibres of the wood are clearly distinguishable, and perfectly resemble those of the date tree. I think it not improbable, that before Nechos dug the canal between the Nile and the Red sea, the communication be­tween Arsinoe or Clysma and Memphis, may have been carried on this way; and stations may have been established on the spots now covered by these petrified trees; the water requisite to produce and maintain vegetation might have been procured from deep wells, or from reservoirs of rain water, as is done in the equally barren desert between Djidda and Mekka. After the completion of the canal, this route was perhaps neglected, the trees, left without a regular supply of water, dried up and fell, and the sands, with the winter rains and torrents, gradually effected the petrifaction. I have seen specimens of the petrified wood of date trees found in the Libyan desert, beyond the Bahr bala ma, where they were observed by Horneman in 1798, and in 1812, by M. Boutin, a French officer, who brought several of them to Cairo. They re­semble precisely those which I saw on the Suez road, in colour, substance, and texture. Some of them are of silex, in others the substance seems to approach to hornblende.

We continued our route E. by S. over an uneven and somewhat hilly country covered with black petrosilex; and after a day’s march of eight hours and a quarter, we halted in a valley of little depth, called Wady Onszary (ﻱﺭﺎﺼﻧﺍ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ), where our camels found good pasture. Close by are some low hills, where the sands are seen in the state of formation into sand-rock, and presenting all the different gradations between their loose state and the solid stone. I saw a great quantity of petrified wood upon one of these hills, amongst which was the entire trunk of a date tree.

April 22d.—From Onszary we travelled E. by S. for one hour, and then E. At the end of three hours, the hilly country termi­nates, beyond which, in this route, no petrified wood is met with; we then entered upon a widely extended and entirely level plain, called by the Bedouins El Mograh (ﺡﺮﻘﻤﻟﺍ), upon which we rested after a march of five hours and a half. While we were preparing our dinner two ostriches approached near enough to be distinctly seen. A shot fired by one of the Arabs frightened them, and in an instant they were out of sight. These birds come into this plain, from the eastward, from the desert of Tyh; but I never heard that the Bedouins of this country take the trouble of hunting them. The plain of Mograh is famous for the skirmishes which have taken place there, for the caravans that have been plundered in crossing it, and for the number of travellers that have been mur­dered on it. In former times, when this desert was constantly over-run by parties of robbers, the Mograh was always chosen by them as their point of attack, because, in the event of success, no one could escape them on a plain where objects can be distin­guished in every direction to the distance of several hours. Even at present, since the route has been made more secure by the vi­gilance of the Pasha of Cairo, robberies sometimes happen, and in the autumn of 1815 a rich caravan was plundered by the Arabs Terabein.¹

The desert of Suez is never inhabited by Bedouin encampments, though it is full of rich pasture and pools of water during winter and spring. No strong tribes frequent the eastern borders of Egypt, and a weak insulated encampment would soon be stripped of its property by nightly robbers. The ground itself is the patri­mony of no tribe, but is common to all, which is contrary to the general practice of the desert, where every district has its acknow­ledged owners, with its limits of separation from those of the neigh­bouring tribes, although it is not always occupied by them.

In the afternoon we proceeded over the plain, and in eight hours and three quarters arrived opposite to the station of the Hadj, called Dar el Hamra which we left about three miles to the north of us, and which is distinguished by a large acacia tree, the only one in this plain. At the end of nine hours and a half, and about half an hour from the road, we saw a mound of earth, which, the Arabs told me, was thrown up about fifty years ago, by work­men employed by Ali Beg, then governor of Egypt, in digging a well there. The ground was dug to the depth of about eighty feet, when no water appearing the work was abandoned. At eleven hours and a quarter, our road joined the great Hadj route, which passes in a more northerly direction from Dar el Hamra to the Bir­ket el Hadj, or inundation to the eastward of Heliopolis, four hours distant from Cairo, upon the banks of which the pilgrims encamp, previous to their setting out for Mekka. Between this road, and that by which we had travelled, lies another, also terminating at Kayt Beg. The southernmost route, which, as I have already mentioned, is frequented only by the Arabs Terabein, branches off from this common route at about six hours distant from Suez, and is called Harb bela ma (the road without water); it is very seldom fre­quented by regular caravans, being hilly and longer than the others, but I was told that notwithstanding its name, water is frequently met with in the low grounds, even in summer. Just beyond where we fell in with the Hadj route, we rested in the bed of a torrent called Wady Hafeiry (ﻱﺮﻴﻔﺣ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ), at the foot of a chain of hills which begin there, and extend to the N. of the route, and parallel with it towards Adjeroud. Our camels found abundance of pas­ture on the odoriferous herb Obeitheran (ﻥﺍﺮﺜﻴﺒﻋ), Santolina fra­grantissima of Forskal, which grew here in great plenty.

April 23d.—Our road lay between the southern mountain and the abovementioned chain of hills to the north, called Djebel Uweybe (ﻪﺒﻳﻮﻋ ﻞﺒﺟ), direction E.S.E. In three hours we passed the bed of a torrent called Seil Abou Zeid (ﺩﻴﺯ ﻮﺒﺍ ﻞﻴﺳ), where some acacia trees grow. The road is here encompassed on every side by hills. In four hours and a half we reached, in the direction E. by S. Wady Emshash (ﺵﺎﺸﻣﺍ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ), a torrent like the former, which in winter is filled by a stream of several feet in depth. Rains are much more frequent in this desert than in the valley of Egypt, and the same remark may be made in regard to all the mountains to the southward, where a regular, though not unin­terrupted rainy season sets in, while in the valley of the Nile, as is well known, rain seldom falls even in winter. The soil and hills are here entirely calcareous.

We had been for the whole morning somewhat alarmed by the appearance of some suspicious looking men on camels at a distance in our rear, and our Bedouins had, in consequence, prepared their matchlocks. When we halted during the mid-day hours, they also alighted upon a hill at a little distance; but seeing us in good order, and with no heavy loads to excite their cupidity, they did not approach us. They, however, this evening, fell upon a small party of unarmed Egyptian peasants who were carrying corn to Suez, stripped them, took away their camels and loads, and the poor owners fled naked into Suez. It was afterwards learnt that they belonged to the tribe of Omran, who live on the eastern shore of the gulf of Akaba. Without establishing regular patrols of the Be­douins themselves on this road, it will never be possible to keep it free from robbers.

At six hours and a half begins a hilly country, with a slight de­scent through a narrow pass between hills, called El Montala (ﻊﻠﻄﻧﻤﻟﺍ), a favourite spot for robbers. At seven hours and a half we passed Adjeroud (ﺩﻭﺮﺠﻋ), about half an hour to our left; about two miles west of it is a well in the Wady Emshash, called Bir Emshash, which yields a copious supply of water in the winter, but dries up in the middle of summer if rains have not been abundant; the garrison of Adjeroud, where is a well so bitter that even camels will not drink the water, draws its supply of drinking water from the Bir Emshash. From hence the road turns S.E. over a slightly descending plain. At ten hours and a half is the well called Bir Suez, a copious spring enclosed by a massive building, from whence the water is drawn up by wheels turned by oxen, and emptied into a large stone tank on the outside of the building. The men who take care of the wheels and the oxen remain constantly shut up in the building for fear of the Bedouins. The water is brackish, but it serves for drinking, and the Arabs and Egyptian peasants travelling between Cairo and Suez, who do not choose to pay a higher price for the sweet water of the latter place, are in the habit of filling their water skins here, as do the people of Suez for their cooking provision. From an inscription on the building, it appears that it was erected in the year of the Hedjra 1018. We reached Suez about sunset, at the end of eleven hours and a half. I alighted with the Bedouins upon an open place between the west­ern wall of the town, and its houses.

April 24th. In the time of Niebuhr Suez was not enclosed; there is now a wall on the west and south-west, which is rapidly falling to decay. The town is in a ruinous state; and neither merchants nor artisans live in it. Its population consists only of about a dozen agents, who receive goods from the ports of the Red sea, and forward them to their correspondents at Cairo, together with some shop-keepers who deal chiefly in provisions. The Pasha keeps a garrison here of about fifty horsemen, with an officer who commands the town, the neighbouring Arabs, and the shipping in the harbour. As Suez is one of the few harbours in the Red sea where ships can be repaired, some vessels are constantly seen at the wharf; the repairs are carried on by Greek shipwrights and smiths, in the service of the Pasha, who are let out to the ship­owners by the commanding officer. Suez has of late become a harbour of secondary importance, the supplies of provisions, &c. for the Hedjaz being collected principally at Cosseir, and shipped from thence to Yembo and Djidda: but the trade in coffee and India goods still passes this way to Cairo. I saw numerous bales of spices and coffee lying near the shore, and a large heap of iron, together with packages of small wares, antimony, and Egyptian goods for exportation to Djidda, and ultimately to Yemen and India. The merchants complained of the want of camels to transport their goods to Cairo. The Pasha, who owns a considerable part of the imports of coffee, has fixed the carriage across the desert at a low price, and none of the agents venture to offer more to the camel dri­vers; the consequence of which is, that few are encouraged to come to Suez beyond the number required for the Pasha’s merchandize. A caravan consisting of five or six hundred camels leaves Suez for Cairo on the 10th of each lunar month, accompanied by guards and two field-pieces; while smaller ones, composed of twenty or thirty beasts, depart almost every four or five days; but to these the merchants are shy of trusting their goods, because they can never depend on the safety of the road; accidents however seldom hap­pen at present, so formidable is the name of Mohammed Ali.

Before the power of this Pasha was established in Egypt, and du­ring the whole period of the Mamelouk government, the Bedouins might be called complete masters of Suez. Every inhabitant was obliged t[o] have his protector, Ghafyr (ﺮﻴﻔﻏ), among the Bedouins of Mount Sinai, to whom he made annual presents of money, corn, and clothes, and who ensured to him the safe passage of his goods and person through the desert, and the recovery of whatever was plundered by the others. At that time the rate of freight was fixed by the Bedouins, and camels were in plenty; but, whenever the governors of Cairo quarrelled with the Bedouins, or ill-treated any of them at Cairo, the road was immediately interrupted, and the Bedouins placed guards over the well of Naba (ﻊﺑﻧ), two hours distant from Suez, in the hills on the eastern side of the gulf, to prevent the people of the town from drawing from thence their daily supply of sweet water. The difference was always settled by presents to the Bedouins, who, however, as may readily be con­ceived, often abused their power; and it not unfrequently hap­pened that, even in time of peace, a Bedouin girl would be found, in the morning, sitting on the well, who refused permission to the water carriers of Suez to draw water unless they paid her with a new shirt, which they were obliged to do; for to strike her, or even to remove her by force, would have brought on a war with her tribe. The authority of the Bedouins is now at an end, though their Sheikhs receive from the Turkish governors of Suez a yearly tribute, under the name of presents, in clothes and money; the Pasha himself has become the Ghafyr of the people of Suez, and exacts from every camel load that passes through the gates from two to four dollars, for which he engages to ensure the passage through the desert; when the caravan however was plundered in 1815, he never returned the value of the goods to the owners.

The Arabs Terabein are the conductors of the caravans to Ghaza, and Khalyl (Hebron), the latter of which is eight days distant. At this time the freight per camel’s load was eighteen Patacks, or four dollars and a half. These caravans bring the manufactures of Damascus, soap, glass-ware, tobacco, and dried fruits, which are shipped at Suez for the Hedjaz and Yemen.

The eastern part of the town of Suez is completely in ruins, but near the shore are some well built Khans, and in the inhabited part of the town are several good private houses. The aspect of Suez is that of an Arabian, and not an Egyptian town, and even in the barren waste, which surrounds it, it resembles Yembo and Djidda; the same motley crowds are met with in the streets, and the greater part of the shop-keepers are from Arabia or Syria. The air is bad, occasioned by the saline nature of the earth, and the exten­sive low grounds on the north and north-east sides, which are filled with stagnant waters by the tides. The inhabitants endeavour to counteract the influence of this bad atmosphere by drinking brandy freely; the mortality is not diminished by such a remedy, and fevers of a malignant kind prevail during the spring and summer.

The water of the well of Naba, though called sweet, has a very indifferent taste, and becomes putrid in a few days if kept in skins. The government has made a sort of monopoly of it; but its distri­bution is very irregular, and affrays often happen at the well, par­ticularly when ships are on the point of sailing. In general, how­ever, they touch at Tor, for a supply; those lying in the harbour might fill their casks at the well of Abou Szoueyra (ﻩﺮﻳﻮﺻ), about seven hours to the south of Ayoun Mousa, and about half an hour from the sea shore, where the water is good; but Arabs will seldom give themselves so much trouble for water, and will rather drink what is at hand, though bad, than go to a dis­tance for good.

Ships, after delivering their cargoes at Suez, frequently proceed to Cosseir, to take in corn for the Hedjaz. They first touch at Tor for water, and then stand over to the western coast, anchoring in the creeks every evening till they reach their destination. The coast they sail along is barren, and without water, and no Arabs are seen. At one or two days sail from Suez is an ancient Coptic convent, now abandoned, called Deir Zafaran or Deir El Araba (ﻪﺑﺮﻌﻟﺍ ﺮﻳﺩ); it stands on the declivity of the mountain, at about one hour from the sea. Some wild date-trees grow there. At the foot of the mountain are several wells three or four feet deep, upon the sur­face of whose waters naphtha or petroleum is sometimes found in the month of November, which is skimmed off by the hand; it is of a deep brownish black colour, and of the same fluidity as turpen­tine, which it resembles in smell. This substance, which is known under the name of Zeit el Djebel (ﻞﺒﺠﻟﺍ ﺖﻳﺯ), mountain oil, is col­lected principally by the Christians of Tor, and by the Arabs He­teim, of the eastern shore of the Red sea; it is greatly esteemed in Egypt as a cure for sores and rheumatism, and is sold at Suez and Tor, at from one to two dollars per pound.

Niebuhr, travelling in 1762, says that Suez derives its provisions in great part from Mount Sinai and Ghaza: this is not the case now. From Mount Sinai it obtains nothing but charcoal, and a few fruits and dates in the autumn; dried fruits of the growth of Damas­cus are the only import from Ghaza. The town is supplied with provisions from Cairo; vegetables are found only at the time of the arrival of the caravan. Every article is of the worst quality, and twenty-five per cent. dearer than at Cairo. Syrian, Turkish, and Moggrebyn pilgrims are constantly seen here, waiting for the departure of ships to the Hedjaz. I found three vessels in the har­bour, and it may be calculated that one sails to the southward every fortnight. No Europeans are settled here; but an English agent is expected next year, to meet the ships from Bombay, ac­cording to a treaty made with the Pasha, by several English houses, who wished to open a direct communication between India and Egypt.²

April 15th.—As the small caravan with which I had come to Suez remained there, I set out accompanied only by my guide and another Arab, whom he had engaged, and who afterwards proved through the whole journey a most serviceable, courageous, and honest companion. We left Suez early in the morning: the tide was then at flood, and we were obliged to make the tour of the whole creek to the N. of the town, which at low water can be forded. In winter time, and immediately after the rainy season, this circuit is rendered still greater, because the low grounds to the northward of the creek are then inundated, and become so swampy that the camels cannot pass them. We rode one hour and three quarters in a straight line northwards, after passing, close by the town, several mounds of rubbish, which afford no object of curiosity except a few large stones, supposed to be the ruins of Clysma or Arsinoë. We then turned eastwards, just at the point where the remains of the ancient canal are very distinctly visi­ble: two swellings of the ground, of which the eastern is about eight or ten feet high, and the western somewhat less, run in a straight line northwards, parallel with each other, at the distance of about twenty-five feet. They begin at a few hundred paces to the N.W. of high-water mark, from whence northwards the ground is covered by a saline crust. We turned the point of this inlet, and halted for a short time at the wells of Ayoun Mousa, under the date trees. The water of these wells is copious, but one only affords sweet water, and this is so often rendered muddy by the passage of Arabs, whose camels descend into the wells, that it is sel­dom fit to supply a provision to the traveller, much less for shipping. We rested, at two hours and three quarters from the wells, in the plain called El Kordhye (ﻪﻴﺿﺮﻜﻟﺍ).

April 26th.—We proceeded over a barren sandy and gravelly plain, called El Ahtha (ﻲﺜﺣﻻﺍ), direction S. by E. For about an hour the plain was uneven; we then entered upon a widely-extended flat, in which we continued S.S.E. Low mountains, the commencement of the chain of Tyh, run parallel with the road, to the left, about eight miles distant; they are inhabited by Terabein. At the end of four hours and a half we halted for a few hours in Wady Seder which takes its name of Wady only, from being overflown with water when the rains are very copious, which, how­ever, does not happen every year. Its natural formation by no means entitles it to be called a valley, its level being only a few feet lower than that of the desert on both sides. Some thorny trees grow in it, but no herbs for pasture. We continued our way S. b. E. over the plain, which was alternately gravelly, stony, and sandy. At the end of seven hours and a half we reached Wady Wardan (ﻥﺍﺩﺭﺍﻭ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ), a valley or bed of a torrent, similar in nature to the former, but broader. Near its extremity, at the sea side, it is several miles in breadth; and here is the well of Abou Szoueyra, which I have already mentioned. The Arabs of Tor seldom encamp in this place, but the Terabein Arabs are sometimes attracted by the well. During the war which happened about eight years ago between the Towara and the Maazy Bedouins, who live in the mountains between Cairo and Cosseir, a party of the former hap­pened to be stationed here with their families. They were sur­prised one morning by a troop of their enemies, while assembled in the Sheikh’s tent to drink coffee. Seven or eight of them were cut down: the Sheikh himself, an old man, seeing escape impos­sible, sat down by the fire, when the leader of the Maazy came up, and cried out to him to throw down his turban and his life should be spared. The generous Sheikh, rather than do what, according to Bedouin notions, would have stained his reputation ever after, exclaimed, “I shall not uncover my head before my enemies;” and was immediately killed with the thrust of a lance. A low chain of sand-hills begins here to the west, near the sea; and the eastern mountains approach the road. At nine hours and a half, S.S.E. the eastern mountains form a junction with the western hills. At ten hours we entered a hilly country; at ten hours and three quarters we rested for the night in a barren valley among the hills, called Wady Amara (ﺓﺭﺎﻤﻋ). We met with nobody in this route except a party of Yembo merchants, who had landed at Tor, and were travelling to Cairo. The hills consist of chalk and silex in very irregular strata: the silex is sometimes quite black; at other times it takes a lustre and transparency much resembling agate.

April 27th.—We travelled over uneven hilly ground, gravelly and flinty. At one hour and three quarters we passed the well of Howara (ﻩﺭﺍﻮﻫ ﺮﻴﺑ), round which a few date trees grow. Niebuhr tra­velled the same route, but his guides probably did not lead him to this well, which lies among hills about two hundred paces out of the road. He mentions a rock called Hadj er Rakkabe, as one German mile short of Gharendel; I remember to have halted under a large rock, close by the road side, a very short distance before we reached Howara, but I did not learn its name. The water of the well of Howara is so bitter, that men cannot drink it; and even camels, if not very thirsty, refuse to taste it.

From Ayoun Mousa to the well of Howara we had travelled fif­teen hours and a quarter. Referring to this distance, it appears probable that this is the desert of three days mentioned in the Scriptures to have been crossed by the Israelites immediately after their passing the Red sea, and at the end of which they arrived at Marah. In moving with a whole nation, the march may well be supposed to have occupied three days; and the bitter well at Marah, which was sweetened by Moses, corresponds exactly with that of Howara. This is the usual route to Mount Sinai, and was probably therefore that which the Israelites took on their escape from Egypt, provided it be admitted that they crossed the sea near Suez, as Niebuhr, with good reason, conjectures. There is no other road of three days march in the way from Suez towards Sinai, nor is there any other well absolutely bitter on the whole of this coast, as far as Ras Mohammed. The complaints of the bitterness of the water by the children of Israel, who had been accustomed to the sweet water of the Nile, are such as may daily be heard from the Egyptian servants and peasants who travel in Arabia. Accus­tomed from their youth to the excellent water of the Nile, there is nothing which they so much regret in countries distant from Egypt; nor is there any eastern people who feel so keenly the want of good water as the present natives of Egypt. With respect to the means employed by Moses to render the waters of the well sweet, I have frequently enquired among the Bedouins in different parts of Arabia whether they possessed any means of effecting such a change, by throwing wood into it, or by any other process; but I never could learn that such an art was known.

At the end of three hours we reached Wady Gharendel (ﻝﺪﻧﺮﻏ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ) which extends to the N.E. and is almost a mile in breadth, and full of trees. The Arabs told me that it may be traced through the whole desert, and that it begins at no great distance from El Arysh, on the Mediterranean, but I had no means of ascertaining the truth of this statement. About half an hour from the place where we hal­ted, in a southern direction, is a copious spring, with a small rivulet, which renders the valley the principal station on this route. The water is disagreeable, and if kept for a night in the water skins, it turns bitter and spoils, as I have myself experienced, having passed this way three times.

If we admit Bir Howara to be the Marah³ of Exodus (xv. 23), then Wady Gharendel is probably Elim, with its wells and date trees, an opinion entertained by Niebuhr, who, however, did not see the bitter well of Howara on the road to Gharendel. The non­existence, at present, of twelve wells at Gharendel must not be con­sidered as evidence against the just-stated conjecture; for Niebuhr says that his companions obtained water here by digging to a very small depth, and there was a great plenty of it, when I passed; water, in fact, is readily found by digging, in every fertile valley in Arabia, and wells are thus easily formed, which are quickly filled up again by the sands.

The Wady Gharendel contains date trees, tamarisks, acacias of different species, and the thorny shrub Gharkad (ﺪﻗﺮﻏ), the Peganum retusum of Forskal, which is extremely common in this peninsula, and is also met with in the sands of the Delta on the coast of the Mediterranean. Its small red berry, of the size of a grain of the pomegranate, is very juicy and refreshing, much resembling a ripe gooseberry in taste, but not so sweet. The Arabs are very fond of it, and I was told that in years when the shrub produces large crops, they make a conserve of the berries. The Gharkad, which from the colour of its fruit is also called by the Arabs Homra delights in a sandy soil, and reaches its maturity in the height of summer when the ground is parched up, exciting an agreeable surprise in the traveller, at finding so juicy a berry pro­duced in the driest soil and season.⁴ The bottom of the valley of Gharendel swarms with ticks, which are extremely distressing both to men and beasts, and on this account the caravans usually encamp on the sides of the hills which border the valley.

We continued in a S.E. ½ E. direction, passing over hills, and at the end of four hours from our starting in the morning, we came to an open, though hilly country, still slightly ascending, S.S.E. and then reached by a similar descent, in five hours and a half, Wady Oszaita (ﺔﻄﻴﺻﺍ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ), enclosed by chalk hills. Here is another bitter well which never yields a copious supply, and sometimes is completely dried up. A few date trees stand near it. From hence we rode over a wide plain S.E. b. S. and at the end of seven hours and three quarters came to Wady Thale (ﺔﻠﻌﺛ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ). Rock salt is found here as well as in Gharendel; date, acacia, and tamarisks grow in the valley; but they were now all withered. To our right was a chain of mountains, which extend towards Gharendel. Pro­ceeding from hence south, we turned the point of the mountain, and then passed the rudely constructed tomb of a female saint, called Arys Themman (ﻥﺎﻤﺛ ﺲﻳﺮﻋ), or the bridegroom of Themman, where the Arabs are in the habit of saying a short prayer, and sus­pending some rags of clothing upon some poles planted round the tomb. After having doubled the mountain we entered the valley called Wady Taybe (ﻪﺒﻴﻃ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ), which descends rapidly to the sea. At the end of eight hours and a half we turned out of Wady Taybe into a branch of it, called Wady Shebeyke (ﻪﻘﻴﺒﺷ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ), in which we continued E.S.E. and halted for the night, after a day’s march of nine hours and a quarter. This is a broad valley, with steep though not high cliffs on both sides. The rock is calcareous, and runs in even horizontal layers. Just over the road, a place was shewn to me from whence, some years since, a Bedouin of the Arabs of Tor precipitated his son, bound hands and feet, because he had stolen corn out of a magazine belonging to a friend of the family. In the great eastern desert the Aeneze Bedouins are not so severe in such instances; but they would punish a Bedouin who should pilfer any thing from his guest’s baggage.

April 28th.—We set out before dawn, and continued for three quarters of an hour in the Wady, after which we ascended E. b. S. and came upon a high plain, surrounded by rocks, with a towering mountain on the N. side, called Sarbout el Djemel (ﻞﻤﺠﻟﺍ ﺕﻮﺑﺮﺳ). We crossed the plain at sun rise; and the fresh air of the morning was extremely agreeable. There is nothing which so much compensates for the miseries of travelling in the Arabian deserts, as the pleasure of enjoying every morning the sublime spec­tacle of the break of day and of the rising of the sun, which is al­ways accompanied, even in the hottest season, with a refreshing breeze. It was an invariable custom with me, at setting out early in the morning, to walk on foot for a few hours in advance of the caravan; and as enjoyments are comparative, I believe that I de­rived from this practice greater pleasure than any which the arts of the most luxurious capitals can afford. At two hours and a half the plain terminated; we then turned the point of the above-men­tioned mountain, and entered the valley called Wady Hommar (ﺮﻤﺣ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ), in which we continued E. b. N. This valley, in which a few acacia trees grow, has no perceptible slope on either side; its rocks are all calcareous, with flint upon some of them; by the road side, I observed a few scratchings of the figures of camels, done in the same style as those in Wady Mokatteb copied by M. Niebuhr and M. Seetzen, but without any inscriptions. At four hours we issued from this valley where the southern rocks which enclose it terminate, and we travelled over a wide, slightly ascend­ing plain of deep sand, called El Debbe (ﻪﺑﺪﻟﺍ), a name given by the Towara Bedouins to several other sandy districts of the same kind. The direction of our road across it was S. E. by S. At six hours and a half we entered a mountainous country, much devastated by torrents, which have given the mountains a very wild appearance. Here sand-stone rocks begin. We followed the windings of a val­ley, and in seven hours and a quarter reached the Wady el Naszeb (ﺐﺼﻨﻟﺍ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ), where we rested, under the shade of a large impend­ing rock, which for ages, probably, has afforded shelter to travellers; it is I believe the same represented by Niebuhr in vol. i. pl. 48. He calls the valley Warsan, which is, no doubt, its true name, but the Arabs comprise all the contiguous valleys under the general name of Naszeb. Shady spots like this are well known to the Arabs, and as the scanty foliage of the acacia, the only tree in which these valleys abound, affords no shade, they take advan­tage of such rocks, and regulate the day’s journey in such a way, as to be able to reach them at noon, there to take the siesta.

The main branch of the Wady Naszeb continues farther up to the S.E. and contains, at about half an hour from the place where we rested, a well of excellent water; as I was fatigued, and the sun was very hot, I neglected to go there, though I am sensible that travellers ought particularly to visit wells in the desert, because it is at these natural stations that traces of former inhabitants are more likely to be found than any where else. The Wady Naszeb empties its waters in the rainy season into the gulf of Suez, at a short dis­tance from the Birket Faraoun.

While my guides and servant lay asleep under the rock, and one of the Arabs had gone to the well to water the camels and fill the skins, I walked round the rock, and was surprised to find inscrip­tions similar in form to those which have been copied by travellers in Wady Mokatteb. They are upon the surface of blocks which have fallen down from the cliff, and some of them appear to have been engraved while the pieces still formed a part of the main rock. There is a great number of them, but few can be dis­tinctly made out. I copied the following from some rocks which are lying near the resting-place, at about an hundred paces from the spot where travellers usually alight. [not included] The fallen blocks must be closely examined in order to discover the inscriptions; in some places they are still to be seen on the rock above. They have evidently been done in great haste, and very rudely, sometimes with large letters, at others with small, and seldom with straight lines. The characters appear to be writ­ten from right to left, and although mere scratches, an instrument of metal must have been required, for the rock, though of sand­stone, is of considerable hardness. Some of the letters are not higher than half an inch; but they are generally about fifteen lines in height, and four lines in breadth; the annexed figure, (as M. Seetzen has already observed in his publication upon these inscriptions in the Mines de l’Orient) is seen at the beginning of almost every line. Hence it appears that none of the inscriptions are of any length, but that they consist merely of short phrases, all similar to each other, in the beginning at least. They are perhaps prayers, or the names of pilgrims, on their way to Mount Sinai, who had rested under this rock. A few drawings of camels and goats, done in the coarsest manner, are likewise seen. M. Niebuhr (vol. i. pl. 50) has given some sketches of them.

Some Syale trees, a species of the mimosa, grow in this valley. The pod which they produce, together with the tenderest shoots of the branches, serve as fodder to the camels; the bark of the tree is used by the Arabs to tan leather. The rocks round the resting-place of Naszeb are much shattered and broken, evidently by torrents; yet no torrents within the memory of man have ever rushed down the valley.

In the afternoon we entered a lateral branch of the Naszeb, more northerly than the main branch which contains the well, and we gradually ascended it. We had been joined at the Ayoun Mousa by an Egyptian Bedouin, belonging to the Arabs of the province of Sherkyeh, who was married to a girl of the Towara Arabs; last night, being in the vicinity of the place where he knew his wife to be, he put spurs to the ass on which he was mounted, and thinking that he knew the road, he quitted the Wady Shebeyke two hours before we did, and without any provision of water. He missed his way on the sandy plain of Debbe, and instead of reaching the spring of Naszeb, where he intended to allay his thirst, he rode the whole of this morning and afternoon about the mountain in different directions, in fruitless search after the shady and conspicuous rock of Naszeb. Towards the evening we met him, so much exhausted with thirst, that his eyes had become dim, and he could scarcely recognise us; had he not fallen in with us he would probably have perished. My companions laughed at the effeminate Egyptian, as they called him, and his presumption in travelling alone in districts with which he was unacquainted. At the end of eight hours and three quarters, in a general direction of. E. by S. we passed a small inlet in the northern chain, where, at a short distance from the road, is said to be a well of tolerable water, called El Maleha (ﻪﻟﺎﻤﻟﺍ), or the saltish. We then ascended with difficulty a steep mountain, composed to the top of moving sands, with a very few rocks appearing above the surface. We reached the summit after a day’s march of nine hours and three quarters, and rested upon a high plain, called Raml el Morak (ﻕﺍﺮﻌﻤﻟﺍ ﻞﻣﺭ). From hence we had an extensive view to the north, bounded by the chain of mountains called El Tyh (ﻪﻴﺘﻟﺍ); this range begins near the above­mentioned mountain of Sarbout el Djemel, and extends in a curve eastwards twenty or twenty-five miles, from the termination of the Wady Hommar. At the eastern extremity lies a high moun­tain called Djebel Odjme (ﺔﻤﺠﻋ ﻞﺒﺟ), to the north of which begins another chain, likewise running eastwards towards the gulf of Akaba. The name of El Tyh is applied to this ridge as well as to the former, but it is specifically called El Dhelel (ﻞﻠﺿ). These chains form the northern boundaries of the Sinai mountains, and are the pasturing places of the Sinai Bedouins. They are the most regular ranges of the peninsula, being almost throughout of equal height, without any prominent peaks, and extending in an uninterrupted line eastwards. They are inhabited by the tribes of Terabein and Tyaha, the latter of whom are richer in camels and flocks than any other of the Towara tribes. The valleys of these mountains are said to afford excellent pasturage, and fine springs, though not in great numbers. The Terabein frequently visit Cairo and Suez; but the Tyaha have more intercourse with Ghaza, and Khalyl, and are a very bold, independent people, often at war with their neighbours, and, even now, caring little for the authority of the Pasha of Egypt. At the southern foot of the mountain Tyh extends a broad sandy plain, called El Seyh, which begins at the Debbe, and continues for two days journey eastwards. It affords good pasturage in spring, but has no water, and is therefore little frequented by Bedouins.

April 29th.—We crossed the plain of Raml Morak in a S. by E. direction. From hence the high peak of Serbal bore S. In an hour and a quarter we reached the upper chain of the mountains of Sinai, where grünstein begins, mixed in places with layers of gra­nite, and we entered the valley called Wady Khamyle (ﺔﻠﻴﻤﺧ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ). At the end of two hours we passed in the valley a projecting rock, like that of Naszeb, serving for a resting-place to travellers: here I observed several inscriptions similar to those of Naszeb, but much effaced, together with rude drawings of mountain goats. As I did not wish to betray too much curiosity, until I could ascertain what conduct I ought to pursue in order to attain my chief object of penetrating to Akaba, I did not stop to copy these monuments. At the end of two hours and a half in the Wady Khamyle we came to the first Bedouin encampment which I had seen since leaving Suez. It belonged to the tribe of Szowaleha (ﻪﺤﻟﺍﻮﺻ). On the approach of summer all the Bedouins leave the lower coun­try, where the herbage is dried up, and retire towards the higher parts of the peninsula, where, owing to the comparatively cooler climate, the pasture preserves its freshness much longer. Ascending gently through the valley, we passed at three hours a place of burial called Mokbera (ﻩﺮﺒﻘﻣ), one of the places of interment of the tribe of Szowaleha. It seems to be a custom prevalent with the Arabs in every part of the desert, to have regular burial-grounds, whither they carry their dead, sometimes from the distance of several days journey. The burying ground seen by Niebuhr⁵ near Naszeb, which, as I have already mentioned, I passed without visiting, and missed in my way back, by taking a more southern road, appears to have been an ancient cemetery of the same kind, formed at a time when hieroglyphical characters were in use among all the na­tions under Egyptian influence. As there are no countries where ancient manners are so permanent as in the desert, it is probable that the same customs of sepulture then prevailed which still exist, and that the burying ground described by Niebuhr by no means proves the former existence of a city. Among the rude tombs of Mokbera, which consist, for the most part, of mere heaps of earth covered with loose stones, the tomb of Sheikh Hamyd, a Bedouin saint, is distinguished; the Szowaleha keep it always carefully covered with fresh herbs.

At the end of three hours and a half we entered another valley, called Wady Barak (ﻕﺮﺑ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ), where the ascent becomes more steep. Here the rock changes to porphyry, with strata of grün­stein; the surface of the former is in most places completely black. The mountains on both sides of the valley are much shat­tered: detached blocks and loose stones covered their sides, and the bottom of the valley was filled, in many places to the depth of ten feet, with a layer of stones that had fallen down. The Wady becomes narrower towards the upper end, and the camels ascended with difficulty. At the end of six hours and a quarter we reached the extremity, to which the Bedouins apply the name of Djebel Leboua (ﻩﻮﺒﻟ ﻞﺒﺟ), the mountain of the lioness, a name indicating, perhaps, that lions existed at one period in the peninsula of Mount Sinai, though no longer to be found here. In ascending Wady Barak, I saw upon several blocks lying by the road side short inscriptions, generally of one line only, all of which began with the remarkable character already represented.

From the top of Djebel Leboua we descended a little, and en­tered the Wady Genne (ﺔﻨﻗ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ), a fine valley, several miles in breadth, and covered with pasturage. It lay in a straight line before us, and presented much of Alpine scenery. We here found several Bedouins occupied in collecting brush-wood, which they burn into charcoal for the Cairo market; they prefer for this purpose the thick roots of the shrub Rethem (ﻢﺛﺭ), Genista rætam of Forskal, which grows here in abundance. Of the herbs which grow in this valley many were odoriferous, as the Obeythe­ran, Sille (ﺔﻠﺳ), perhaps the Zilla Myagrum of Forskal; and the Shyh (ﺢﻴﺷ), or Artemisia. The Bedouins collect also the herb Adjrem (ﻡﺮﺠﻋ), which they dry, break in pieces and pound between stones, and then use as a substitute for soap to wash their linen with. I was told that very good water is found at about two miles to the E. of this valley.

We gained the upper extremity of Wady Genne at the end of nine hours. The ranges of mountains in this country differ in their formation from all the other Arabian chains which I have seen, the valleys reaching to the very summits, where they form a plain, and thence descend on the other side. A very pointed peak of rocks, near the left of the summit of Wady Genne, is known by the appellation of Zob el Bahry (ﻱﺮﺤﺒﻟﺍ ﺏﺯ). After crossing a short plain, we again descended S.E. by S. and en­tered the valley called Wady Berah (ﺡﺍﺮﺑ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ), where I saw ano­ther block with inscriptions. Near it were many others, but ef­faced. The following was more regularly and clearly written than any I have seen: [not included] We descended slowly through this valley, which is covered with sand, till, at the end of ten hours, we entered a side valley called Wady Osh (ﺶﻋ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ), and at ten hours and a half alighted at an encampment of Bedouins, pitched at no great distance from a burial ground similar to that which we had passed in the morning.

This encampment belonged to the Oulad Said (ﺪﻴﻌﺳ ﺩﻻﻭﺍ), a branch of the Szowaleha tribe, and one of their Sheikhs, Hassan (ﻥﺎﺴﺣ), had his tent here; this we entered, though he was absent, and the Arabs had a long and fierce dispute among themselves to decide who should have the honour of furnishing us a supper, and a breakfast the next morning. He who first sees the stranger from afar, and exclaims: “There comes my guest,” has the right of entertaining him, whatever tent he may alight at. A lamb was killed for me, which was an act of great hospitality; for these Bedouins are poor, and a lamb was worth upwards of a Spanish dollar, a sum that would afford a supply of butter and bread to the family for a whole week. I found the same custom to prevail here, which I observed in my journey through the northern parts of Arabia Petræa; when meat is served up, it is the duty of one of the guests to demand a, portion for the women, by calling out “ Lahm el Ferash,” i.e. “the meat for the apartment of the women;” and a part of it is then either set aside, or he is answered that this has been already done. In the evening we joined in some of the popular songs, of which a description will be found in my illustration of Bedouin manners⁶

I was naturally asked for what object I had come to these moun­tains. As the passage of Greeks on their way to visit the convent of Sinai is frequent, I might have answered that I was a Greek; but I thought it better to adhere to what I had already told my guides, that I had left Cairo, in order not to expose myself to the plague, that I wished to pass my time among the Bedouins while the disease prevailed, and that I intended to visit the convent. Other Moslems would have considered it impious to fly from the infection; but I knew that all these Bedouins entertain as great a dread of the plague as Europeans themselves. During the spring, when the disease usually prevails in Egypt, no prospect of gain can induce them to expose themselves to infection, by a journey to the banks of the Nile; the Bedouins with whom I left Cairo were the last who had remained there. Had the Pasha granted me a Firmahn to the great Sheikh of the Towara Arabs, I should have gone di­rectly to his tent, and in virtue of it I should have taken guides to conduct me to Akaba; but being without the Firmahn, I thought it more prudent to visit the convent in the first instance, and to depart from thence for Akaba, in order to take advantage of such influence as the Prior might possess over the Bedouins, for though they pay little respect to the priests, yet they have some fear of being excluded from the gains accruing from the transport of visitors to the convent. As every white-skinned person, who makes his appearance in the desert, is supposed by the Arabs to be attached to the Turkish army, or the government of Cairo, my going to Akaba without any recommendations would have given rise to much suspicion, and I should probably have been supposed to be a deserter from the Turkish army, attempting to escape by that circuitous route to Syria; a practice which is sometimes re­sorted to by the soldiers, to whom, without the Pasha’s passport, Egypt is closed both by sea and land.

In the Wady Osh there is a well of sweet water. From hence upwards, and throughout the primitive chain of Mount Sinai, the water is generally excellent, while in the lower chalky mountains all round the peninsula, it is brackish, or bitter, except in one or two places. The Wady Osh and Wady Berah empty their waters in the rainy season into Wady el Sheikh, above Feiran.

April 30th.—We did not leave our kind hosts till the afternoon, for they insisted on my taking a dinner before I set out. I gave to their children, who accompanied me a little way, some coffee beans to carry to their mothers, and some Kammereddein, a sweetmeat made at Damascus from apricots, of which I had laid in a large stock, and which is very acceptable to all the Be­douins of Syria, Egypt, and the Hedjaz. The offer of any re­ward to a Bedouin host is generally offensive to his pride; but some little presents may be given to the women and children. Trin­kets and similar articles are little esteemed by the Bedouins; but coffee is in great request all over the desert; and sweetmeats and sugar are preferred to money, which, though it will sometimes be accepted, always creates a sense of humiliation, and consequently of dislike towards the giver. For my own part, being con­vinced that the hospitality of the Bedouin is afforded with disinterested cordiality, I was in general averse to making the slightest return. Few travellers perhaps will agree with me on this head; but will treat the Bedouins in the same manner as the Turks, and other inhabitants of the towns, who never proffer their services or hospitality without expecting a reward; the feelings of Bedouins, however, are very different from those of townsmen, and a Be­douin will praise the guest who departs from him without making any other remuneration than that of bestowing a blessing upon them and their encampment, much more than him who thinks to redeem all obligations by payment.

We returned from Wady Osh towards Wady Berah; but leav­ing the latter, which here takes a direction towards Wady Feiran, we ascended by a narrow valley called Wady Akhdhar (ﺮﻀﺧﺍ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ). Here I again saw some inscriptions on blocks of stone lying by the road side. A few hours to the N.E. of Wady Osh is a mountain called Sheyger, where native cinnabar is collected; it is called Rasokht (ﺖﺨﺳﺭ) by the Arabs, and is usually found in small pieces about the size of a pigeon’s egg. It is very seldom crystal­lized; but there are sometimes nodules on the surface; it stains the fingers of a dark colour, and its fracture is in perpendicular fibres. I did not hear that the Arabs traded at all in this metal. In Wady Osh are rocks of gneiss mixed with granite. Gneiss is found in many parts of the peninsula.

After one hour we came to a steep ascent, and descent, called El Szaleib (ﺐﻴﻠﺼﻟﺍ), which occupied two hours. We then continued our descent into the great valley called Wady el Sheikh (ﺦﻴﺸﻟﺍ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ), one of the principal valleys of the peninsula. The rocks of Szaleib consist throughout of granite, on the upper strata of which run layers of red feldspath, some of which has fallen down and covers the valley in broken fragments. The Wady el Sheikh is broad, and has a very slight acclivity; it is much frequented by Be­douins for its pasturage. Whenever rain falls in the mountains, a stream of water flows through this Wady, and from thence through Wady Feiran, into the sea. We rode in a S.E. direction along the Wady el Sheikh for two hours, and then halted in it for the night, after an afternoon’s march of four hours. Several Arabs of the encampment where we slept the preceding night had joined our party, to go to the convent, for no other reason, I believe, than to get a good dinner and supper on the road. This evening eight persons kneeled down round a dish of rice, cooked with milk which I had brought from Wady Osh, and the coffee-pot being kept on the fire, we sat in conversation till near midnight.

May 1st.—We continued in a S.E. direction, ascending slightly: the valley then becomes narrower. At two hours we came to a thick wood of tamarisk or Tarfa, and found many ca­mels feeding upon their thorny shoots. It is from this evergreen tamarisk, which grows abundantly in no other part of the penin­sula, that the manna is collected. We now approached the cen­tral summits of Mount Sinai, which we had had in view for several days. Abrupt cliffs of granite from six to eight hundred feet in height, whose surface is blackened by the sun, surround the ave­nues leading to the elevated platform, to which the name of Sinai is specifically applied. These cliffs enclose the holy mountain on three sides, leaving the E. and N.E. sides only, towards the gulf of Akaba, more open to the view. On both sides of the wood of Tarfa trees extends a range of low hills of a substance called by the Arabs Tafal (ﻞﻔﻃ), which I believe to be principally a detritus of the feldspar of granite, but which, at first sight, has all the ap­pearance of pipe-clay; it is brittle, crumbles easily between the fingers, and leaves upon them its colour, which is a pale yel­low. The Arabs sell it at Cairo, where it is in request for taking stains out of cloth, and where it serves the poor instead of soap, for washing their hands; but it is chiefly used to rub the skins of asses during summer, being supposed to refresh them, and to defend them against the heat of the sun.

At the end of three hours we entered the above-mentioned cliffs by a narrow defile about forty feet in breadth, with perpendicular granite rocks on both sides. The ground is covered with sand and pebbles, brought down by the torrent which rushes from the upper region in the winter time. In a broader part of the pass an insulated rock, about five feet high, with a kind of natu­rally formed seat, is shewn as a place upon which Moses once re­posed, whence it has the name of Mokad Seidna Mousa (ﻲﺳﻮﻣ ﺎﻧﺪﻴﺳ ﺪﻌﻘﻣ); the Bedouins keep it covered with green or dry herbs, and some of them kiss it, or touch it with their hands, in passing by. Beyond it the valley opens, the mountains on both sides diverge from the road, and the Wady el Sheikh continues in a S. direc­tion with a slight ascent. A little to the east, from hence, is the well called Bir Mohsen (ﻦﺴﺤﻣ ﺮﻴﺑ). After continuing in the Wady for an hour beyond the defile, we entered a narrow inlet in the east­ern chain, and rested near a spring called Abou Szoueyr (ﺮﻳﻮﺻ ﻮﺑﺍ). At four hours and a half was a small walled plantation of tobac­co, with some fruit trees, and onions, cultivated by some of the Bedouins Oulad Said. In the afternoon we crossed the moun­tain by a by-path, fell again into the Wady el Sheikh, and at the end of eight hours from our setting out in the morning reached the tomb of Sheikh Szaleh (ﺢﻟﺎﺻ ﺎﻨﻴﺳ ﻡﺎﻘﻣ), from which the whole valley takes its name. The coffin of the Sheikh is deposited in a small rude stone building; and is surrounded by a thin partition of wood, hung with green cloth, upon which several prayers are embroidered. On the walls are suspended silk tassels, handkerchiefs, ostrich eggs, camel halters, bridles, &c. the offerings of the Bedouins who visit this tomb. I could not learn exactly the history of this Sheikh Szaleh: some said that he was the forefather of the tribe of Szowa­leha; others, the great Moslem prophet Szaleh, sent to the tribe of Thamoud, and who is mentioned in the Koran; and others, again, that he was a local saint, which I believe to be the truth. Among the Bedouins, this tomb is the most revered spot in the peninsula, next to the mountain of Moses; they make frequent vows to kill a sheep in honour of the Sheikh should a wished-for event take place; and if this happens, the votary repairs to the tomb with his family and friends, and there passes a day of conviviality. Once in every year all the tribes of the Towara repair hither in pilgrimage, and remain encamped in the valley round the tomb for three days. Many sheep are then killed, camel races are run, and the whole night is passed in dancing and singing. The men and women are dressed in their best attire. The festival, which is the greatest among these people, usually takes place in the latter part of June, when the Nile begins to rise in Egypt, and the plague sub­sides; and a caravan leaves Sinai immediately afterwards for Cairo. It is just at this period too that the dates ripen in the val­leys of the lower chain of Sinai, and the pilgrimage to Sheikh Szaleh thus becomes the most remarkable period in the Bedouin year.

In the western mountain opposite Sheikh Szaleh, and about one hour and a half distant, is a fruitful pasturing place, upon a high mountain, with many fields, and plantations of trees, called El Fereya (ﻊﻴﺮﻔﻟﺍ), where once a convent stood. It is in possession of the Oulad Said.

We continued from Sheikh Szaleh farther S. till at the end of six hours and a half we turned to our right into a broad valley, at the termination of which I was agreeably surprised by the beautiful verdure of a garden of almond trees belonging to the convent. From thence, by another short turn to the left, we reached the convent, in seven hours and a half. We alighted under a window, by which the priests communicate with the Arabs below. The letter of recommendation which I had with me was drawn up by a cord, and when the prior had read it, a stick tied across a rope was let down, upon which I placed myself, and was hoisted up. Like all travellers I received a cordial reception and was shewn into the same neatly furnished room in which all preceding Europeans had taken up their abode.

I rested in the convent three days. When I told the monks that I intended to go to Akaba, they gave me very little encouragement, particularly when they learnt that I had no Firmahn from the Pasha; but finding that I was firmly resolved, they sent for the chief Ghafyr, or protector of the convent, and recommended me strongly to him. The monks live in such constant dread of the Bedouins, who knowing very well their timid disposition, take every opportunity to strengthen their fears, that they believe a person is going to certain destruction who trusts himself to the guidance of these Bedouins any where but on the great road to Suez or to Tor. I had been particularly pleased with the character and behaviour of Hamd Ibn Zoheyr, the Bedouin who had joined us at Suez; and not being equally satisfied with the guide who had brought me from Cairo, I discharged him, and engaged Hamd for the journey to Akaba; he did not know the road himself, but one of his uncles who had been there assured us that he was well acquainted with the tribe of Heywat, which we should meet on the road, and with all the passages of the country; I therefore en­gaged him together with Hamd.

As no visitor of the convent is permitted to leave it without the knowledge of one of the Ghafyrs, who has a right to share in the profits of the escort, I was obliged to give a few piastres to him who is at present the director of the affairs of the convent in the desert. The Arabs have established here the same custom which I remarked in my journey from Tor to Cairo. Every one who is present at the departure of a stranger or of a loaded camel from the convent is entitled to a fee, provided the traveller has not passed a line, which is about one mile from the convent. To avoid this unnecessary company and expense, I stole out of the convent by night, as secretly as possible; but we were overtaken within the limits by a Bedouin, and my guides were obliged to give him six piastres, to make him desist from farther claims. I left my servant and unnecessary baggage at the convent, and mounted a camel, for the hire of which I gave five dollars, and I paid as much to each of my guides, who were also mounted, and were to conduct me to Akaba and back again.

May 4th.—I left the convent before day light, but travelled no farther to day than to the well of Abou Szoueyr, where we had rested on the first of May, and where a large company of Arabs assembled when they heard of our arrival. They quarrelled long with my guides for having taken me clandestinely from the convent, but were at last pacified by a lamb which I bought, and partook of with them. In the evening we heard from afar the songs of an encampment, to which my guides went, to join in the dance. I remained with the baggage, in conversation with an Arab who had lately come from Khalyl or Hebron, and who much dissuaded me from going to Akaba. He assured me that the uncle of Hamd my guide knew nothing of the Arabs of those parts, nor even the paths through the country; but I slighted his advice, because I believed that it was dictated by envy, and that he wished himself to be one of the party. The result shewed, however, that he was right.

May 5th.—At sunrise we left Abou Szoueyr, and ascended a hilly country for half an hour. After a short descent, which on this side terminates the district of Sinai, properly so called, we continued over a wide open plain, with low hills, called Szoueyry (ﻱﺭﻴﻮﺻ), direction N.E. b. E. In an hour and a half we entered a narrow valley called Wady Sal (ﻝﺎﺳ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ), formed by the lower ridges of the primitive mountains, in the windings of which we descended slightly E. b. N. and E.N.E. On the top I found the rock to be granite; somewhat lower down grünstein, and porphyry began to appear; farther on granite and porphyry cease entirely, and the rock consists solely of grünstein, which in many places takes the nature of slate. Some of the layers of por­phyry are very striking; they run perpendicularly from the very summit of the mountain to the base, in a band of about twelve feet in width, and projecting somewhat from the other rocks on the mountain’s side. I had observed similar strata in Wady Genne, but running horizontally along the whole chain of mountains, and di­viding it, as it were, into two equal parts. The porphyry I have met with in Sinai is usually a red indurated argillaceous substance; in some specimens it had the appearance of red feldspath. In the argil are imbedded small crystals of hornblende, or of mica, and thin pieces of quartz at most two lines square. I never saw any large fragments of quartz in it. Its universal colour is red. The lower mountains of Sinai are much more regularly shaped than the upper ones: they are less rugged, have no insulated peaks, and their summits fall off in smooth curves.

The Wady Sal is extremely barren: we found no pasture for our camels, as no rain had fallen during the two last years, in the whole of this eastern part of the peninsula. A few acacia trees grew in different places; we rested at noon under one of them while a cup of coffee was prepared, and then pursued the Wady down­wards until, at the end of seven hours, we issued from it into a small plain, which we soon crossed, and at seven hours and a half entered another valley, similar to the former, where I again saw some granite, of the gray, small-grained species[.] Our des­cent was here very rapid, and at the end of nine hours and a half we reached a lower level, in a broad valley running southwards. From hence the summit of Mount St. Catherine, behind the convent, bore S.W. by W. Calcareous and sand rocks begin here, and the bottom of the valley is deep sand. We rode in it in the direction N.E. by N. and after a march of eleven hours alighted in a plain, at a spot which afforded some shrubs for our camels to feed upon. The elder of my two guides, by name Szaleh, soon proved himself to be ignorant of the road. He might have passed this way in his youth, and have had a recollection of the general direction of the valleys; but when we arrived in the plain, he pro­ceeded in various directions, in search of a road from the east. We had now, about six or eight miles to our left, a long and straight chain of mountains, the continuation, I believe, of that of Tyh or Dhelel, mentioned above, and running almost parallel with our route. The northern side of these mountains is inhabited by the tribe of Tyaha. Here passes the road which leads straight from the convent to Akaba, while the one we took descended to the sea, and had been chosen by my guides for greater security. The upper road passes by the watering places Zelka, El Ain (the Well), a place much frequented by Bedouins, and where many date-trees grow, and lastly by El Hossey. It is the common route from the convent to Khalyl and Jerusalem.

May 6th.—We started early, and continued our way over the plain, which is called Haydar (ﺭﺍﺪﻴﺣ). It appears to follow the mountain of Tyh as far as its western extremity, and there to join the Seyh, of which I have already spoken, thus forming the north­ern sandy boundary of the lower Sinai chain. As we proceeded, we approached nearer to the mountain, and at length fell in with the looked for road. The ground is gravelly but covered with mov­ing sands which are raised by the slightest wind. To the east the country was open, with low hills, as far as I could see. Our road lay N.E.½ N. At one hour and a half Mount St. Catharine bore S.W. by W. We now descended into a valley of deep sand covered with blocks of chalk rock. At one hour and three quar­ters the valley is contracted into a narrow pass, between low hills of sand-stone, bearing traces of very violent torrents. At the end of two hours, route east by north, we quitted the valley, and crossed a rough rocky plain, intersected on every side by beds of torrents; and at two hours and three quarters halted near a rock. One of the guides went with the camels up a side valley, to bring water from the well Hadhra (ﻩﺮﻀﺣ), (perhaps the Haze­roth (חערות) mentioned in Numbers xxxiii. 17), distant about two miles from the halting place. Near the well are said to be some date trees, and the remains of walls which formerly enclosed a few plantations.

We here met some Towara Bedouins on their way to Cairo with charcoal. After employing a considerable time in collecting the wood and burning it into coal they carry it to Cairo, a journey at least of ten days, and there sell it for three or four dollars per load: so cheap do they hold their labour, and so limited are their means of subsistence. In return, they bring home corn and clothes to their women and children.

We started again as soon as the camels returned from the well, but should probably have gone astray had not the Bedouins above mentioned pointed out the road we ought to take; for Szaleh, the uncle of Hamd, although he pretended to be quite at home in this district, gave evident proofs of being but very slightly acquainted with it. We made many windings between sand-stone rocks, which presented their smooth perpendicular sides to the road; some of them are of a red, others of a white colour; the ground was deeply covered with sand. The traces of torrents were observable on the rocks as high as three and four feet above the present level of the plain. Our main direction was E.N.E. At four hours and three quarters from the time we set out in the morn­ing, we entered Wady Rahab (ﺏﺎﺣﺭ), a fine valley with many Syale trees, where the sands terminate. Route E. At five hours and a half we entered another valley, broader than the former, where I again found an alternation of sand-stone and granite. The barrenness of this district was greater than I had yet wit­nessed in my travels, excepting perhaps some parts of the desert El Tyh; the Nubian valleys might be called pleasure grounds in comparison. Not the smallest green leaf could be discovered; and the thorny mimosa, which retains its verdure in the tropical deserts of Nubia, with very little supply of moisture, was here en­tirely withered, and so dry that it caught fire from the lighted cin­ders which fell from our pipes as we passed. We continued to des­cend by a gentle slope, and at six hours and a half entered Wady Samghy (ﻲﻐﻤﺳ), coming from the south, in which we des­cended N.E. At the end of eight hours and a half we left this valley and turned E. into a side one, called Boszeyra (ﻩﺮﻴﺻﻮﺑ); where we halted for the night, at eight hours and three quarters.

We had met in Wady Samghy two old Bedouins of the Mezeine tribe, who belong to the Towara nation: they were fishermen, on their way to the sea to exercise their profession. One of them car­ried in a small sack a measure of meal which was to serve for their food on shore, the other had a skin of water upon his shoulder; they were both half naked, and both approaching to seventy years of age. One of them was deaf, but so intelligent that it was easy to talk with him by signs; he had established a vocabulary of gestures with his companion, who had been his fishing partner for ten years, and who was one of the shrewdest and hardiest Bedouins I had ever seen; in his younger days he had been a noted robber, and in attempting to carry off the baggage of a French officer in the Sherkyeh province in Egypt, he was seized, laid under the stick, and so severely beaten, that his back had from that time become bent; but notwithstanding this misfortune and his age, he had lost none of his spirits, and his robust constitution still enabled him to cross these mountains on foot, and to exert his acti­vity whenever it was required. These two men partook this even­ing of my supper; they of course asked me where I was going, and shook their heads when I told them I was bound for Akaba. None of my guides knew what business I had there, but they supposed that I had some verbal message to deliver to the Turkish Aga, who was at the head of the garrison. Ayd es Szaheny (ﻲﻧﺣﺎﺼﻠﺍ), the old robber, soon found out that my guide Szaleh knew little of the road, and still less of the Arab tribes before us. He plainly told him that he would not be able to ensure either my safety or his own, in passing through their districts, and reproached him for having deluded me with false assurances. There appeared to be so much good faith and sense in all the old man said, and I found him so well informed respecting the country, that I soon determined to engage him to join us; but as we were to descend the next morning by the same road to the sea-shore, I deferred making him any over­tures till we should arrive there.

The Wady Boszeyra is enclosed by gray granite rocks, out of which the Towara Arabs sometimes hew stones for hand mills, which they dispose of to the northern Arabs, and transport for sale as far as Khalyl. It is very seldom that any Arabs pasture in the district we had traversed, from Wady Sal. The Towara find better pasturage in the southern and south-western parts of the peninsula, and as its whole population is very small, the more barren parts of it are abandoned, and especially this side, where very few wells are found.

May 7th.—From Boszeyra we crossed a short ridge of moun­tains, and then entered a narrow valley, the bed of a torrent, called Saada (ﻩﺩﺎﻌﺳ), in the windings of which we descended by a steeper slope than any of the former; our main direction E. The moun­tains on both sides were of moderate height and with gentle slopes, till after an hour and a half, when we reached a chain of high and perpendicular grünstein rocks, which hemmed in the valley so closely as to leave in several places a passage of only ten feet across. After proceeding for a mile in this very striking and majestic defile, I caught the first glimpse of the gulf of Akaba; the valley then widens and descends to the sea, and after two hours and a quarter we alighted upon the sandy beach, which is here several hundred paces in breadth; the grünstein and granite rocks reach all the way down; but at the very foot of the mountain a thin layer of chalk appeared just above the surface of the ground. The valley opens directly upon the sea, into which it empties its torrent when heavy rains fall. Some groves of date-trees stand close by the shore, among which is a well of brackish but drinkable water; the place is called El Noweyba (ﻊﺒﻳﻮﻧﻟﺍ). We now followed the coast in a direction N.N.E. and at the end of three hours and a quarter halted at a grove of date-trees, intermixed with a few tamarisks, called Wasta (ﻪﻄﺳﺍﻭ), close by the sea. Here is a small spring at a distance of fifty yards from the sea, and not more than eight feet above the level of the water; it was choked with sand, which we removed, and on digging a hole about three feet deep and one foot in diameter, it filled in half an hour with very tolerable water. The shore is covered with weeds brought hither by the tide[.]

Here the two Bedouins intended to take up their quarters for fishing, but I easily prevailed upon Ayd to accompany us far­ther on. He promised to conduct us as far as Taba, a valley in sight of Akaba, but declared that he should not be justified in holding out to me promises of safety beyond that point. This was all that I wished, for the present, thinking that when we ar­rived thither, I should be able to prevail on him to continue farther. Szaleh now gave me reason to suspect that, from the moment of our setting out, he had had treacherous intentions. He secretly endea­voured to persuade Hamd to return, and finding the latter resolved to fulfil his engagements, he declared that he had now shown us enough of the way, that we had only to follow the shore to reach Akaba, and that the weakness of his camel would not allow it to proceed farther. I replied that he was at liberty to take him­self off, but that, on my return to the convent, I should pay him only for the three days he had travelled with me. This was not to his liking, and he therefore preferred going on. Before we left this place Ayd told me that as I had treated him with a supper last night, it was his duty to give me a breakfast this morning. While he kneaded a loaf of flour, and baked it in the ashes, his companion caught some fish, which we boiled, and made a soup of the broth mixed with bread. The deaf man was made to understand by signs that he was to wait for the return of Ayd, and we set out together before mid-day. Before us lay a small bay, which we skirted; the sands on the shore every where bore the impression of the pas­sage of serpents, crossing each other in many directions, and some of them appeared to be made by animals whose bodies could not be less than two inches in diameter. Ayd told me that serpents were very common in these parts; that the fishermen were much afraid of them, and extinguished their fires in the evening before they went to sleep, because the light was known to attract them. As serpents are so numerous on this side, they are probably not de­ficient towards the head of the gulf on its opposite shore, where it appears that the Israelites passed, when they journeyed from mount Hor, by the way of the Red sea, to compass the land of Edom,” and when the “Lord sent fiery serpents among the people.”⁷

On the opposite side of the gulf the mountains appeared to reach down to the sea-side. In the direction S.S.E. and S.E. they are high; to the northward the chain lowers, and from the point E.S.E. towards Akaba the level is still lower. We saw at a distance several Gazelles, which, my guides told me, descend at mid-day to the sea to bathe. At one hour from Wasta we reached near the sea another collection of palm trees, larger than the former, and having a well, which was completely choaked up. These trees receive no other irrigation than the winter rains; each tree has its acknowledged owner among some of the Towara tribes: those which I have just noticed belong to some persons of the tribe of Aleygat. Not the smallest attention is paid to the trees till the period of the date harvest, when the owners encamp under them with their families for about a week while the fruit is gathered. The shrub Gharkad also grows here in large quan­tities. At one hour and three quarters we came to another small bay, round which lay the road, the main direction of the shore being N.E. by N. The mountains approach very near to the water, leaving only a narrow sloping plain covered with loose stones, washed down from above by the torrents. The road was profusely strewed with shells of different species, all of which were empty. The fishermen collect the shells, take out the animals, and dry them in the sun, particularly that of the species called Zorom­bat (ﺕﺎﺒﻧﺭﺯ), which I have also seen in plenty on the African coast of the Red sea, north of Souakin, and at Djidda, where they are much esteemed by the mariners, and are sold by the fishermen at Tor and Suez. I here made a rough measurement of the breadth of the gulf: having assumed a base of seven hundred paces along the beach, and then measured with my compass the angles formed at either extremity of it, with a prominent point of the opposite mountain, the result gave a breadth of about twelve miles. The ve­getation appeared to be much less impregnated with saline parti­cles than I had found it on other parts of the coast of the Red sea.

At two hours and three quarters we had to pass round the bot­tom of another bay, of red and white sand-stone, where steep rocks advance so close to the water as to leave only a narrow path. At three hours and three quarters we passed an opening into the mountain, called Wady Om Hash (ﺵﺎﺣ ﻡﺍ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ), from whence a tor­rent descends, which, after its issue from the mountain, spreads to a considerable distance along the shore, and produces verdure. The shrub Doeyny (ﻲﻧﻴﻭﺩ) grows here in abundance; it is almost a foot in height, and continues green the whole year. The Arabs collect and burn it, and sell the ashes at Khalyl, where they are used in the glass manufactories. We passed on our left several similar inlets into the mountain, the beds of torrents, but my guides could not, or would not, tell their names. The Bedouins are generally averse to satisfying the traveller’s curiosity on such subjects; not being able to conceive what interest he has in informing himself of mere names, they ascribe to repeated ques­tions of this nature improper motives. Some cunning is often required to get proper answers, and they frequently give false names, for no other reason than to have the pleasure of deluding the en­quirer, and laughing at him among themselves behind his back. At four hours and a quarter we passed Wady Mowaleh (ﺢﻟﺍﻮﻣ); and at the end of five hours and three quarters reached the northern point of the last mentioned bay, formed by a projecting part of the mountain, or promontory, called Abou Burko (ﻊﻗﺮﺑ ﻮﺑﺍ), which means “he who wears a face veil,” because on the top of it is a white rock, which is thought to resemble the white Berkoa, or face veil of the Arab women, and renders it a conspicuous object from afar. Noweyba, where we had first reached the shore, bore from hence S.S.W. We rested for the night in a pasturing place near the mountain, on the south side of the promontory. Old Ayd, who carried his net with him, brought us some fish. His dog eat the raw fish, and his master told me that the dog sometimes passed several months without any other food.

May 8th.—We set out long before day-break. None of our party was ever more ready to alight, or to take his supper, than Szaleh, and none more averse to start. During the whole way he was continually grumbling, and endeavouring to persuade the others to turn back. We were one hour in doubling the Abou Burko, a chalky rock, whose base is washed by the waves. On the other side we passed, at two hours, in the bottom of a small bay, Wady Zoara (ﻩﺮﺍﻮﺯ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ), where a few date trees grow, and a well of saltish water is found, unfit to drink. The maritime plain was here nearly two miles in breadth. Having made the tour of another bay from Abou Burko, we reached, at three hours and a half, a promontory forming its northern boundary, and called Ras Om Haye (ﻪﻴﺣ ﻡﺍ ﺲﺍﺭ), a name derived from the great quantity of serpents found there, some of which, Ayd told me, were venemous; we however saw none of any kind. The whole coast of the Ælani­tic gulf, from Ras Abou Mohammed to Akaba, consists of a suc­cession of bays separated from such other by head lands. The Ras Om Haye forms the western extremity of the mountain of Tyh, whose straight and regular ridge runs quite across the peninsula, and is easily distinguished from the surrounding mountains. We halted at the end of five hours in a rocky valley at the foot of Ras Om Haye, where acacia trees and some grass grow. Ayd assured us that in the mountain, at some distance, was a reservoir of rain water, called Om Hadjydjein (ﻦﻴﺠﻴﺠﺣ ﻡﺍ), but he could not answer for its containing water at this time. He described to Hamd its situation, and the way to it, with a view of persuading him to go and fetch some water for us; but his description was so confused, and I thought contradictory in several circumstances, and withal so pompous, that I concluded it to be all a story, and told him he was a babbler. “A babbler!” he exclaimed; “min Allah, no body in my whole life ever called me thus before. A babbler! I shall presently shew you, which of us two deserves that name.” He then seized one of the large water skins, and barefooted as he was, be­gan ascending the mountain, which was covered with loose and sharp stones. We soon lost sight of him, but saw him again, farther on, climbing up an almost perpendicular path. An hour and a half after, he returned by the same path, carrying on his bent back the skin full of water, which could not weigh less than one hundred pounds, and putting it down before us said, “There! take it from the babbler!” I was so overcome with shame, that I knew not how to apologize for my inconsiderate language; but when he saw that I really felt myself in the wrong, he was easily pacified, and said nothing more about it till night, when seeing me take a hearty draught of the water, and hearing me praise its sweetness, com­pared with the brackish water of the coast, he stopped me, and said, “Young man, for the future never call an old Bedouin a babbler.”

On the opposite side of the gulf the mountains recede somewhat from the shore, leaving at their feet a sloping plain. A place on the coast, called Hagol (ﻞﻘﺣ), bore from hence E. b. S; it is a fruitful valley by the water side, with large date plantations, which were clearly discernible. It is in possession of the tribe of Arabs called Akraba (ﻪﺑﺮﻘﻋ). Behind them, in the mountains, dwells the strong and warlike tribe of Omran (ﻥﺍﺮﻤﻋ). Hagol is one long day’s journey from Akaba; to the south of it about four hours is a similar cluster of date trees, called El Hamyde (ﺓﺪﻴﻤﺤﻟﺍ), which bore from us S.E. b. E. The mountains on that coast are steep, with many peaks.

No Arabs live on the western coast, owing to the scanty pastu­rage; it is occasionally visited by fishermen and others, who come to collect the herb from which the soda ashes are obtained, or to cut wood and burn it into charcoal. The fishermen are very poor and visit the coast only during the summer months; they cure their fish with the salt which they collect on the southern part of the coast, and when they have thus prepared a sufficient quantity of fish, they fetch a camel and transport it to Tor or Suez. At Tor a camel’s load of the fish, or about four hundred pounds, may be had for three dollars. The fishermen prepare also a sort of lard by cutting out the fat adhering to the fish and melting it, they then mix it with salt, preserve it in skins, and use it all the year round instead of butter, both for cookery and for anointing their bodies. Its taste is not disagreeable. As the Bedouins pre­fer the upper road, this road along the coast is seldom visited, ex­cept by poor pilgrims who have been cut off from the caravan, or robbed by Bedouins, and who being ignorant of the road across the desert to Cairo, sometimes make the tour of the whole penin­sula by the sea side, as they are thus sure not to lose their way, and in winter-time seldom fail in finding pools of water. Ayd told me that he had frequently met with stragglers of this descrip­tion, worn out with fatigue and hunger.

From hence northwards the shore runs N.E. ½ N. Having doubled the point of Om Haye, we found on the other side, after again passing round a small bay, at five hours and three quarters, a bank of sand running into the sea to a considerable distance, and several miles in breadth; it is called Wady Mokabelat (ﺕﻼﺑﺎﻘﻣ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ), and is the termination of a narrow Wady in the mountains to our left, from whence issues a torrent which spreads in time of rain over a wide extent of ground, partly rocky and partly sandy, where it produces good pasturage, and irrigates many acacia trees. The view up this Wady or inlet of the mountain is very curious: at its mouth it is nearly two miles wide, and it narrows gradually upwards with the most perfect regularity, so that the eye can trace it for five or six miles, when it becomes so narrow as to present only the appear­ance of a perpendicular black line. At six hours and a half we came again to a mountain forming a promontory, called Djebel Sherafe (ﻪﻓﺍﺮﺷ ﻞﺑﺟ). The mountains from Om Haye northward decline considerably in height. The highest point of the chain ap­pears to be the summit above Noweyba, where we had descended to the shore.

Beyond Djebel Sherafe we found the road along the shore ob­structed by high cliffs, and were obliged to make a detour by en­tering a valley to the west, called Wady Mezeiryk (ﻖﻳﺮﻴﺯﻤ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ). We ascended through many windings, entered several lateral valleys, and descended again to the shore at the end of eight hours and a half, at a point not more than half an hour distant from where we had turned out of the road. We found the valley Mezeiryk full of excellent pasture; many sweet-scented herbs were growing in it, and the acacia trees were all green. Upon enquiry I learnt that to the north of Djebel Tyh copious rains had fallen during the winter, while to the south of it there had been very little for the last two years, and in the eastern parts none.

In the whole way from the convent I had not met with the smallest trace of antiquity, either inscriptions upon the rocks by the road-side or any other labour of man, until we reached the summit of Wady Mezeiryk, where, close to the road, is a large sand-stone rock, which seems, for a small space, to have re­ceived an artificial surface. Upon it I found rude drawings of camels, and of mountain and other goats, resembling those which I had before seen, and those which I saw afterwards in the Wady Mokatteb. No inscriptions were visible, but the annexed figures were drawn between the animals. These were the only drawings or inscriptions that I met with in the mountains to the E. of the convent, although I passed many flat rocks, well suited to them. I am inclined to think that the inscriptions have been written by pilgrims proceeding to Mount Sinai, and that the drawings of animals which are executed in a ruder manner and with a less steady hand, are the work of the shepherds of the peninsula. We find only those animals repre­sented which are natives of these mountains, such as camels, moun­tain and other goats, and gazelles, but principally the two first,⁸ and I had occasion to remark in the course of my tour, that the pre­sent Bedouins of Sinai are in the habit of carving the figures of goats upon rocks and in grottos. Niebuhr observes, that in the hiero­glyphic inscriptions which he saw in the ancient burying ground not far distant from Naszeb, he found figures of goats upon almost every inscribed tomb-stone; this animal is not very frequent in the hieroglyphic inscriptions of Egypt.

From the point where we descended again to the shore, we fol­lowed a range of black basaltic cliffs, into which the sea has worked several creeks, appearing like so many small lakes, with very narrow openings towards the sea; they are full of fish and shells. At the end of nine hours and a half we had passed these cliffs, and reached the plain beyond, upon which we continued our route near the shore, and rested for the night at ten hours and a quarter, under a palm-tree, in the vicinity of a deep brackish well, which we were obliged to excavate, in order to procure some water for our camels, they having drank none since we quitted Wasta.

From hence the promontory of Om Haye bore S.W. b. S. This plain, which is the extremity of a valley descending from the western mountain, is called Wady Taba (ﻪﻣﺎﻃ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ). Ayd had promised to conduct me to this spot, but no farther; nor would the new offers which I now made induce hire to advance. We had already passed beyond the limits of the Arabs Towara, which terminate on this side of Wady Mokabelat, and we were now in the territory of the Heywat, who have a very bad reputation. We had met with nobody on the road, but in Wady Mezeiryk, as well as in Wady Taba, we saw footsteps, which shewed that some persons must have passed there a short time before. None of my guides were acquainted with the tribe of Heywat; had we therefore met any strong party of them, they would certainly have stripped us, although not at war with the Towara, for it is a universal practice among Bedouins to plunder all passengers who are unknown to them, and not attended by guides of their own tribe, provided they possess any thing worth seizing. Szaleh had completely deluded both my­self and his own nephew Hamd: he had confidently asserted that he knew the Heywat well, and that the first individual of them whom we should meet would easily be prevailed upon to join our party, and to serve as an additional protector. About one hour before us was another promontory, beyond which we knew that the country was well peopled by two other tribes, the Alowein and Omran, who are the masters of the district of Akaba, intrepid rob­bers, and allies of the Heywat, and who are to this day quite in­dependent of the government of Egypt. Through them we must unavoidably pass to reach Akaba, and Ayd could not give me the smallest hope of being able to cross their valleys without being at­tacked. Had I been furnished with a Firmahn from Moham­med Ali Pasha, I should have repaired at once to the great Sheikh of the Towara, and obliged him to send for some Heywat or Om­ran guides, who might have ensured my safety. But having been disappointed in this respect, I had no alternative but to turn back. Hamd, it is true, bravely offered to accompany me wherever I chose to go, though he knew nothing of the road before us, or the Arabs upon it; but I saw little chance of success, and knew, from what I had heard during my journey from Kerek to Cairo, that the Omran not only rob but murder passengers. Ayd had seen on the shore the footsteps of a man, which he knew to be those of a fisherman, a friend of his who had probably passed in the course of this day. Had we met with him he might have served as our guide, but not a soul was any where to be seen. Under these circumstances I reluctantly determined to retrace my steps the next day, but, instead of proceeding by the shore, to turn off into the mountains, and return to the convent by a more west­ern route.

Akaba was not far distant from the spot from whence we re­turned. Before sun-set I could distinguish a black line in the plain, where my sharp-sighted guides clearly saw the date-trees surrounding the castle, which bore N.E. 1 E.; it could not be more than five or six hours distant. Before us was a promontory called Ras Koreye (ﺔﻳﺮﻗ ﺱﺍﺭ), and behind this, as I was told, there is ano­ther, beyond which begins the plain of Akaba. The castle is situated at an hour and a half or two hours from the western chain, down which the Hadj route leads, and about the same distance from the eastern chain, or lower continuation of Tor Hesma, a mountain which I have mentioned in my journey through the northern parts of Arabia Petræa. The descent of the western mountain is very steep, and has probably given to the place its name of Akaba, which in Arabic means a cliff or a steep declivity; it is probably the Akabet Aila of the Arabian geographers; Mak­rizi says that the village Besak stands upon its summit. In Num­bers, xxxiv. 4, the “ascent of Akrabbim” is mentioned, which appears to correspond very accurately to this ascent of the west­ern mountain from the plain of Akaba. Into this plain, which surrounds the castle on every side except the sea, issues the Wady el Araba, the broad sandy valley which leads towards the Dead sea, and which I crossed in 1812, at a day and a half, or two days journey from Akaba. At about two hours to the south of the castle the eastern range of mountains approaches the sea. The plain of Akaba, which is from three to four hours in length, from west to east, and, I believe, not much less in breadth northward, is very fertile in pasturage. To the distance of about one hour from the sea it is strongly impregnated with salt, but farther north sands prevail. The castle itself stands at a few hundred paces from the sea, and is surrounded with large groves of date-trees. It is a square building, with strong walls, erected, as it now stands, by Sultan el Ghoury of Egypt, in the sixteenth century. In its interior are many Arab huts; a market is held there, which is frequented by Hedjaz and Syrian Arabs; and small caravans ar­rive sometimes from Khalyl. The castle has tolerably good water in deep wells. The Pasha of Egypt, keeps here a garrison of about thirty soldiers, to guard the provisions deposited for the sup­ply of the Hadj, and for the use of the cavalry on their passage by this route to join the army in the Hedjaz. Cut off from Cairo, the soldiers of the garrison often turn rebellious; three years ago an Aga made himself independent, and whenever a corps of troops passed he shut the gates of the castle, and prepared to defend it. He had married a daughter of the chief of the Omran, and thus se­cured the assistance of that tribe. Being at last attacked by some troops sent against him from Cairo he fled to his wife’s tribe, and escaped into Syria.

It appears that the gulf extends very little farther east than the castle, distant from which one hour, in a southern direction, and on the eastern shore of the gulf, lies a smaller and half-ruined castle, inhabited by Bedouins only, called Kaszer el Bedawy. At about three quarters of an hour from Akaba, and the same dis­tance from Kaszer el Bedawy, are ruins in the sea, which are visible only at low water: they are said to consist of walls, houses, and columns, but cannot easily be approached, on account of the shallows. This information was not given to me by my guides, but after my return to Cairo, by some French Mamelouks, in the army of Mohammed Ali Pasha, who had formerly been for several weeks in garrison at Akaba; they, however, had never seen the ruins except from a distance. I enquired particularly whether the gulf did not form two branches at this extremity, as it has always been laid down in the maps, but I was assured that it had only a single ending, at which the castle is situated.

To the north of Akaba, in the mountain leading up to Tor Hes­ma, is a Wady known by the name of Wady Ithem (ﻢﺛﺍ ﻱﺩﺍﻭ). I was told that at a certain spot this valley is shut up by an ancient wall, the construction of which is ascribed by the Arabs to a king named Hadeid, whose intention in erecting it was to prevent the tribe of Beni Helal of Nedjed from making incursions into the plain. By this valley a road leads eastwards towards Nedjed, following, probably, a branch of the mountain which extends to­wards the Akaba of the Syrian Hadj route, where the pilgrims coming from Damascus descend by a steep and difficult pass into the lower plains of Arabia. I believe this chain of mountains con­tinues in a direct and uninterrupted line from the eastern shore of the Dead sea to the eastern shore of the Red sea, and from thence to Yemen. Makrizi, the Egyptian historian, says, in his chapter on Aila (Akaba); “It is from hence that the Hedjaz begins; in former times it was the frontier place of the Greeks; at one mile from it, is a triumphal arch of the Cæsars. In the time of the Islam it was a fine town, inhabited by the Beni Omeya. Ibn Ahmed Ibn Touloun (a Sultan of Egypt), made the road over the Akaba or steep mountain before Aila. There were many mosques at Aila, and many Jews lived there; it was taken by the Franks during the Crusades; but in 566, Salaheddyn transported ships upon camels from Cairo to this place, and reco­vered it from them. Near Aila was formerly situated a large and handsome town, called Aszyoun (ﻥﻮﻴﺼﻋ),” (Eziongeber.)

My guides told me, that in the sea opposite to the above men­tioned promontory of Ras Koreye, there is a small island; they affirmed that they saw it distinctly, but I could not, for it was al­ready dusk when they pointed it out, and the next morning a thick fog covered the gulf. Upon this island, according to their state­ment, are ruins of infidels, but as no vessels are kept in these parts, Ayd, who had been here several times, had never been able to take any close view of them; they are described as extensive, and built of hard stone, and are called El Deir, “the convent,” a word often applied by Arabs to any ruined building in which they suppose that the priests of the infidels once resided.

The Bedouins in the neighbourhood of Akaba, as I have already observed, are the Alouein, Omran, and Heywat. They are all three entitled to a passage duty from the Hadj caravan; the Alou­ein exact it as owners of the district extending from the western mountain, across the plain to Akaba; the Heywat, as the possessors of the country from the well of Themmed, to the summit of the same mountain; and the Omran as masters of the desert from Akaba southward as far as the vicinity of Moeleh. Caravans of these tribes come occasionally to Cairo in search of corn, but they are independent of the Pasha of Egypt, of which they give proofs, by continually plundering the loads of the Hadj caravans, and of all those who pass the great Hadj route through their districts. Their intercourse with Syria, especially with Khalyl, is much more fre­quent than with Cairo.

We had had through the whole of this day a very intense Si­moum, or hot-wind, which continued also during the night. In the evening I bathed in the sea, but found myself immediately after­wards as much heated as I had been before. After retiring to sleep we were awakened by the barking of Ayd’s dog, upon which Ayd springing up said he was sure that some people were in the neigh­bourhood. We therefore got our guns ready, and sat by the fire the whole night, for whatever may be the heat of the season, the Bedouin must have his fire at night. Szaleh gave evident signs of fear, but happily the morning came without realizing his ap­prehensions.

May 9th.—Ayd still expressed his certainty that somebody had approached us last night, so much confidence did he place in the barking of his dog; he therefore advised me to hasten my way back, as some Arabs might see our footsteps in the sand, and pursue us in quest of a booty. On departing, Ayd, who was barefooted, and whose feet had become sore with walking, took from under the date-bush round which we had passed the night, a pair of leathern sandals, which he knew belonged to his Heywat friend, the fisher­man, and which the latter had hidden here till his return. In order to inform the owner that it was he who had taken the san­dals, he impressed his footstep in the sand just by, which he knew the other would immediately recognise, and he turned the toes to­wards the south, to indicate that he had proceeded with the sandals in that direction.

We now returned across the plain to the before mentioned ba­salt cliffs, passed the different small bays, and turned up into Wady Mezeiryk. We had descended from our camels, which Szaleh was driving before him, about fifty paces in advance; I followed, and about the same distance behind me walked Hamd and Ayd. As we had seen nobody during the whole journey, and were now returning into the friendly districts of the Towara, we had ceased to entertain any fears from enemies, and were laughing at Ayd for recommending us to cross the valleys as quickly as pos­sible. My gun was upon my camel, and I had just turned lei­surely round an angle of the valley, when I heard Ayd cry out with all his might, “Get your arms! Here they are!” I immedi­ately ran up to the camels, to take my gun, but the cowardly Szaleh, instead of stopping to assist his companions, made the camels gallop off at full speed up the valley. I, however, overtook them, and seized my gun, but before I could return to Hamd, I heard two shots fired, and Ayd’s war-hoop, “Have at him! are we not Towara?” Immediately afterwards I saw Hamd spring round the angle, his eyes flashing with rage, his shirt sprinkled with blood, his gun in one hand, and in the other his knife covered with blood; his foot was bleeding, he had lost his turban, and his long black hair hung down over his shoulders. “I have done for him!” he exclaimed, as he wiped his knife; “but let us fly.” “Not without Ayd,” said I: “No indeed,” he replied; “without him we should all be lost.” We returned round the corner, and saw Ayd exerting his utmost agility to come up with us. At forty paces distance an Arab lay on the ground, and three others were standing over him. We took hold of Ayd’s arm and hastened to our camels, though we knew not where to find them. Szaleh had frightened them so greatly by striking them with his gun, that they went off at full-gallop, and it was half an hour before we reached them; one of them had burst its girths, and thrown off its saddle and load. We replaced the load, mounted Ayd, and hastened to pass the rocks of Djebel Sherafe. We then found ourselves in a more open country, less liable to be waylaid amongst rocks, and better able to defend ourselves. Hamd now told me that Ayd had first seen four Bedouins running down upon us; they had evidently intended to waylay us from behind the corner, but came a little too late. When he heard Ayd cry out, he had just time to strike fire and to light the match of his gun, when the boldest of the assailants approached within twenty paces of him and fired; the ball passed through his shirt; he returned the fire but missed his aim; while his opponent was coolly reloading his piece, before his companions had joined him, Ayd cried out to Hamd, to attack the robber with his knife, and advanced to his support with a short spear which he carried; Hamd drew his knife, rushed upon the adversary, and after receiving a wound in the foot, brought him to the ground, but left him immediately, on seeing his companions hastening to his relief. Ayd now said that if the man was killed, we should certainly be pursued, but that if he was only wounded the others would remain with him, and give up the pursuit. We travelled with all possible haste, not knowing whe­ther more enemies might not be behind, or whether the encampment of the wounded man might not be in the vicinity, from whence his friends might collect to revenge his blood.

Ayd had certainly not been mistaken last night; these robbers had no doubt seen our fire, and had approached us, but were frightened by the barking of the dog. Uncertain whether we were proceeding northward or southward, they had waited till they saw us set out, and then by a circuitous route in the mountains had endeavoured, unseen, to get the start of us in order to waylay us in the passes of the Wady Mezeiryk. If they had reached the spot where we were attacked two or three minutes sooner, and had been able to take aim at us from behind the rock, we must all have inevitably perished. That they intended to murder us, contrary to the usual practice of Bedouins, is easily accounted for they knew from the situation of the place, where they disco­vered us, as well as from the dress and appearance of my guides, that they were Towara Bedouins; but though I was poorly dressed, they must have recognized me to be a townsman, and a townsman is always supposed by Bedouins to carry money with him. To rob us without resistance was impossible, their number being too small; or supposing this had succeeded, and any of the guides had escaped, they knew that they would sooner or later be obliged to restore the property taken, and to pay the fine of blood and wounds, because the Towara were then at peace with all their neighbours. For these reasons they had no doubt re­solved to kill the whole party, as the only effectual mode of avoid­ing all disclosures as to the real perpetrators of the murder. I do not believe that such atrocities often occur in the eastern desert, among the great Aeneze tribe; at least I never heard of any; but these Heywat Arabs are notorious for their bad faith, and never hesitate to kill those who do not travel under the protection of their own people, or their well known friends. Scarcely any other Bedouin robbers would have fired till they had summoned us to give up our baggage, and had received a shot for answer.

I had at first intended to visit, on my return, the upper moun­tains, to which there is a road leading through the Wady Moka­belat; but Ayd dissuaded me. He said that if the party from which we had just escaped meant to pursue us, they would probably lay in wait for us in some of the passes in that direction; as he did not doubt that it would be their belief, that we were bound for Tor or Suez, the nearest road to which places lies through the Wady Mokabelat. I yielded to his opinion, and we returned along the coast by the same road we had come. Hamd’s wound was not dangerous; I dressed it as well as I could, and four days afterwards it was nearly healed. We travelled a part of the night, and

May 10th,—early the next morning we again reached Noweyba, the place where we had first reached the coast. We here met Ayd’s deaf friend. Szaleh had all the way, betrayed the most timo­rous disposition; in excuse for running away when we were at­tacked, he said that he intended to halt farther on in the Wady, in order to cover our retreat, and that he had been obliged to run after the camels, which were frightened by the firing; but the truth was, that his terrors deprived him of all power of reflec­tion, otherwise he must have known that the only course, to be pursued in the desert, when suddenly attacked, is to fight for life, as escape is almost impossible.

Having been foiled in my hopes of visiting Akaba, I now wished to follow the shore of the gulf to the southward; but Szaleh would not hear of any farther progress in that direction, and insisted upon my going back to the convent. I told him that his company had been of too little use to me, to make me desirous of keeping him any longer; he therefore returned, no doubt in great haste, by the same route we had come, accompanied by the deaf man; I en­gaged Ayd to conduct us along the coast, Hamd being very ignorant of this part of the peninsula, where his tribe, the Oulad Sayd, never encamp.

The date trees of Noweyba belong to the tribe of Mezeine; here were several huts built of stones and branches of the trees, in which the owners live with their families during the date-harvest. The narrow plain which rises here from the sea to the mountain, is covered with sand and loose stones. Ayd told me that in sum­mer, when the wind is strong, a hollow sound is sometimes heard here, as if coming from the upper country; the Arabs say that the spirit of Moses then descends from Mount Sinai, and in flying across the sea bids a farewell to his beloved mountains.

We rode from Noweyba round a bay, the southern point of which bore from thence S. by W. In two hours and three quarters from Noweyba we doubled the point, and rested for the night in a valley just behind it, called Wady Djereimele (ﻪﻟﻤﻴﺮﺟ), thickly overgrown with the shrub Gharkad, the berries of which are ga­thered in great abundance. Red coral is very common on this part of the coast. In the evening I saw a great number of shellfish leave the water, and crawl to one hundred or two hundred paces inland, where they passed the night, and at sun-rise returned to the sea.

During the last two days of our return from the northward I had found no opportunity to take notes. I had never permitted my companions to see me write, because I knew that if their suspicions were once raised, it would at least render them much less open in their communications to me. It has indeed been a constant maxim with me never to write before Arabs on the road; at least I have departed from it in a very few instances only, in Syria; and on the Nile, in my first journey into Nubia; but never in the interior of Nubia, or in the Hedjaz. Had I visited the convent of Mount Sinai in the character of a Frank, with the Pasha’s Fir­mahn, and had returned, as travellers usually do, from thence to Cairo, I should not have hesitated to take notes openly, because the Towara Arabs dread the Pasha, and dare not insult or molest any one under his protection. But wishing to penetrate into a part of the country occupied by other tribes, it became of importance to conceal my pursuits, lest I should be thought a ne­cromancer, or in search of treasures. In such cases many little stratagems must be resorted to by the traveller, not to lose en­tirely the advantage of making memoranda on the spot. I had accustomed myself to write when mounted on my camel, and proceeding at an easy walk; throwing the wide Arab mantle over my head, as if to protect myself from the sun, as the Arabs do, I could write under it unobserved, even if another person rode close by me; my journal books being about four inches long and three broad, were easily carried in a waistcoat pocket, and when taken out could be concealed in the palm of the hand; sometimes I descended from my camel, and walking a little in front of my companions, wrote down a few words without stopping. When halting I lay down as if to sleep, threw my mantle over me, and could thus write unseen under it. At other times I feigned to go aside to answer a call of nature, and then couched down, in the Arab manner, hidden under my cloak. This evening I had recourse to the last method; but having many observations to note, I remained so long absent from my companions that Ayd’s curiosity was roused. He came to look after me, and perceiving me im­moveable on the spot, approached on tip-toe, and came close behind me without my perceiving him. I do not know how long he had remained there, but suddenly lifting up my cloak, he detected me with the book in my hand. “What is this?” he exclaimed. “What are you doing? I shall not make you answerable for it at present, because I am your companion; but I shall talk further to you about it when we are at the convent.” I made no answer, till we returned to the halting-place, when I requested him to tell me what further he had to say. “You write down our country,” he replied, in a passionate tone, “our mountains, our pasturing places, and the rain which falls from heaven; other people have done this before you, but I at least will never become instrumental to the ruin of my country.” I assured him that I had no bad in­tentions towards the Bedouins, and told him he must be convinced that I liked them too well for that; “on the contrary,” I added, “had I not occasionally written down some prayers ever since we left Taba, we should most certainly have been all killed; and it is very wrong in you to accuse me of that, which if I had omitted, would have cost us our lives.” He was startled at this re­ply, and seemed nearly satisfied. “Perhaps you say the truth,” he observed ; “but we all know that some years since several men, God knows who they were, came to this country, visited the moun­tains, wrote down every thing, stones, plants, animals, even ser­pents and spiders, and since then little rain has fallen, and the game has greatly decreased.” The same opinions prevail in these mountains, which I have already mentioned to be current among the Bedouins of Nubia; they believe that a sorcerer, by writing down certain charms, can stop the rains and transfer them to his own country. The travellers to whom Ayd alluded were M. Seetzen, who visited Mount Sinai eight years since, and M. Agnelli, who ten years ago travelled for the Emperor of Austria, collecting specimens of natural history, and who made some stay at Tor, from whence he sent Arabs to hunt for all kinds of animals.

M. Seetzen traversed the peninsula in several directions, and followed a part of the eastern gulf as far northward, I believe, as Noweyba. This learned and indefatigable traveller made it a rule not to be intimidated by the suspicions and prejudices of the Bedouins; beyond the Jordan, on the shores of the Dead sea, in the desert of Tyh, in this peninsula, as well as in Arabia, he openly fol­lowed his pursuits, never attempting to hide his papers and pencils from the natives, but avowing his object to be that of collecting pre­cious herbs and curious stones, in the character of a Christian phy­sician in the Holy Land, and in that of a Moslim physician in the Hedjaz. If the knowledge of the natural history of Syria and Arabia was the principal object of M. Seetzen’s researches, he was perfectly right in the course which he adopted, but if he considered these countries only as intermediate steps towards the exploring of others, he placed his ultimate success in the utmost peril; and though he may have succeeded in elucidating the history of the brute creation, he had little chance of obtaining much information on the human character, which can only be done by gaining the confidence of the inhabitants, and by accommodating our notions, views, and manners, to their own. When M. Seetzen visited these mountains, the Towaras were not yet reduced to subjection by Mohammed Ali; he was obliged, on several occasions, to pay large sums for his passage through their country, and the Mezeine would probably have executed a plot which they had laid to kill him, had not his guides been informed of it, and prevented him from passing through their territory.

I had much difficulty in soothing Ayd; he remained quiet during the rest of the journey, but after our return to the convent, the report spread among the Arabs that I was a writer like those who had preceded me, and I thus completely lost their confidence.

May 11th.—We continued along the coast S.S.W. and at four hours passed a promontory, called Djebel Abou Ma (ﺀﺎﻣ ﻮﺑﺍ ﻞﺒﺟ), consisting of granite. From hence we proceeded S.W. by S. and at seven hours came to a sandy plain, on the edge of a large sheltered bay.

We found here some Bedouin girls, in charge of a few goats; they told us that their parents lived not far off in the valley Omyle (ﻪﻟﻴﻤﻋ). We went there, and found two small tents, where three or four women and as many little children were occu­pied in spinning, and in collecting herbs to feed the lambs and kids, which were frisking about them. Ayd knew the women, who belonged to his own tribe of Mezeine. Their husbands were fish­ermen, and were then at the sea-shore. They brought us some milk, and I bought a kid of them, which we intended to dress in the even­ing. The women were not at all bashful; I freely talked and laughed with them, but they remained at several yards distance from me. Ayd shook them by the hand, and kissed the children; but Hamd, who did not know them, kept at the same distance as myself. Higher up in the Wady is a well of good water, called Tereibe (ﺔﺒﻳﺮﺗ).

From hence we went S.W. by S. and at eight hours came to Ras Methna (ﺎﻧﺜﻣ ﺱﺍﺭ), a promontory whose cliffs continue for up­wards of a mile close by the water side. Granite and red porphy­ry here cross each other in irregular layers, in some places hori­zontally, in others perpendicularly. The granite of this peninsula presents the same numberless varieties as that above the cataract of the Nile, and near Assouan; and the same beautiful speci­mens of red, rose-coloured, and almost purple may be collected here, as in that part of Egypt. The transition from primitive to secondary rocks, partaking of the nature of grünstein or grauwacke, or hornstein and trap, presents also an endless variety in every part of the peninsula, so that were I even possessed of the requisite knowledge accurately to describe them, it would tire the patience of the reader. Masses of black trap, much resembling basalt, compose several insulated peaks and rocks. On the shore the granite sand carried down from the upper mountains has been formed into cement by the action of the water, and mixed with fragments of the other rocks already mentioned, has become a very beautiful breccia.

At the end of eight hours and three quarters we rested for the night, to the south of this promontory, in a valley still called Wady Methna. From some fishermen whom we met I bought some excellent fish, of a species resembling the turbot, and very common on this coast. These with our kid furnished an abundant repast to ourselves as well as to the fishermen. The love of good and plentiful fare was one of Ayd’s foibles; and he often related with pride that in his younger days he had once eaten at a meal, with three other Bedouins, the whole of a mountain goat; although his com­panions, as he observed, were moderate eaters. Bedouins, in ge­neral, have voracious appetites, and whoever travels with them can­not adopt any better mode of attaching them to his interests than by feeding them abu