which alone I could read, were chiefly the names of the writers. The only Latin inscription which I remember was in the sandstone rocks near Herîmet Haggag,-PERTUS. Fourthly, Crosses of all kinds, chiefly and, were very numerous and conspicuous, standing usually at the beginning of the inscriptions, and (what is important) occurring also and in the same position before those written in Greek and Arabic: often nothing but the cross, sometimes the cross with Alpha and Omega. These last were in the same place where I noticed the Latin inscription, (thus A + 2), of the same colour as the contiguous Sinaitic characters. There are also said to be Ethiopic characters, and a peculiar figure used in the Greek service books, when engravings are given representing some specially sacred subject'. From having previously seen that Forster and Tuch (the last German writer on the subject) had united in the conclusion that the hypothesis of their being Christian inscriptions was groundless, and that the alleged appearance of crosses was a mistake, I was the more surprised to find them in such numbers, and of such a character. However else the crosses may be explained, I can hardly imagine a doubt that they are the work, for the most part, of Christians, whether travellers or pilgrims. They are in this case curious, and if their object could be ascertained, would throw great light on the traditions of the Peninsula. But they cannot have been the work of Israelites. The date of the columns at Malatha, or of the temple and tomb at Petra, would settle the question of the inscriptions written on them. The two latter, I presume, cannot be older than the Roman dominion of Arabia.

1 I am indebted for this to the Rev. J. Reynolds, Ilford, Essex.

SINAI.

PART II

THE JOURNEY FROM CAIRO TO JERUSALEM.

THE following extracts are either from letters, or from journals, written on the spot or immediately afterwards. Such only are selected as served to convey the successive imagery of the chief stages of the journey, or as contained details not mentioned by previous travellers. My object has been to give the impressions of the moment, in the only way in which they could be given,-as the best illustrations of the more general statements elsewhere founded upon them.

I. Departure from Egypt; Overland Route; First Encampment.-II. The Passage of the Red Sea. (1.) Approach to Suez. (2.) Wells of Moses.-III. The Desert, and Sand-storm.-IV. Marah; Elim.-V. Second Encampment by the Red Sea; "Wilderness of Sin."

VI. Approach to Mount Serbål; Wâdy Sidri and Wady Feirân.-VII. Ascent of Serbal.

VIII. Approach to Jebel Musa, the traditional Sinai.-IX. Ascent of Jebel Mûsa and Râs Sufsâfeh.-X. Ascent of St. Catherine.-XI. Ascent of the Jebel ed-Deir. XII. Route from Sinai to the Gulf of 'Akaba. Tomb of Sheykh Saleh. Wady Seyâl and Wady el-'Ain. HAZEROTH.-XIII. Gulf of 'Akaba; Elath.

XIV. The 'Arabah.-XV. Approach to Petra.-XVI. Ascent of Mount Hor.XVII. Petra. KADESH.

XVIII. Approach to Palestine.-XIX. Recollections of the First Day in Palestine. -XX. Hebron.-XXI. Approach to Bethlehem and Jerusalem.-XXII. First View of Bethlehem.-XXIII. First View of Jerusalem.

EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS, ETC,

I.-DEPARTURE FROM EGYPT-OVERLAND ROUTE-FIRST

ENCAMPMENT.

even the

Ir was too hazy to see anything in the distance, Pyramids were but shadows. Soon the green circle of cultivated land receded from view, like the shores as you sail out to sea, and in an hour we were in the Desert ocean. Not, however, a wide circle of sand, but a wild waste of pebbly soil, something like that of the Plaine de Crau (near Marseilles), broken into low hills, and presenting nowhere an even horizon. But the remarkable feature was a broad beaten track, smooth and even, and distinctly marked as any turnpikeroad in England, only twice the width, and running straight as a railway or Roman road through these desert hills.

It was a striking sight in itself, to see the great track of civilised man in such a region. It was still more striking when you knew what it was, the great thoroughfare of the British empire, becoming yearly more important and interesting, as the course which so many friends have travelled and will travel. Even the Exodus for that day waxed faint before it. And lastly, it was most instructive, as the only likeness probably which I shall ever see of those ancient roads, carried through the Desert in old times to the seats of the Babylonian and Persian Empires, to which allusion is made in the 40th chapter of Isaiah. In this comparatively level region, it is true, no moun. tains had to be brought low, nor valleys filled up; but it was literally a high-way prepared in the wilderness:" and the likeness was only interrupted, not obscured, by the solitary stations and telegraphs which at intervals of every five miles, broke the perfect desolation. It has hitherto run along our whole course. To-day, between heaps of stones said by one of the dragomans to be the graves of Ibrahim Pasha's soldiers-which, as the heaps extend for miles and miles, with the utmost regularity, needs no remark, except as an instance of the extreme rapidity with which false local traditions spring up. They are really the "stones," the stumbling-blocks "cast' up"

Isa. xl. 3; lxii. 10.

out of the way, and so left on each side of the road to mark it more distinctly.

Nothing was more striking to me in our first encampment than the realisation of the first lines in Thalaba :

"How beautiful is night,

A dewy freshness fills the silent air."

There is the freshness without coldness, and there is the silence doubly strange as compared with the everlasting clatter of the streets and inns of Cairo, and the incessant sound of songs, and screams, and shocks of the boat upon the Nile; nothing heard but the slight movement amongst the Bedouin circles round their fires, and from time to time a plaintive murmur from the camels as they lie, like stranded ships, moored round the tents.

II. THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA.

(1.) Approach to Suez.-I have at last, as far as mortal eyes can see it, seen the passage of the Red Sea. It was about 3 P.M. yesterday, that as we descended from the high plain on which we had hitherto been moving, by a gentle slope through the hills, called, by figure of speech, the "defile" of Muktala, a new view opened before us. Long lines, as if of water, which we immediately called out to be the sea, but which was, in fact, the mirage; but above these, indubitably, the long silvery line of even hills-the hills of ASIA. Onwards we still came, and in the plain below us lay on the left a fortress, a tomb, and a fortified wall.

This is 'Ajrûd, famous as the first great halting-place of the Mecca Pilgrimage; famous as the scene of Eothen's adventure; still more famous as being the only spot on the road which, by its name and position, can claim to be identified with any of the stations mentioned in the flight of the Israelites. It may possibly be Pi-hahiroth'.

If it was so, then the low hills of Muktala, through which we descended, are Migdol, and Baal Zephon was Suez, which lay on the blue waters of the sea, now incontrovertibly before us east and south; and high above the whole scene, towered the Gebel 'Atâkah, the "Mountain of Deliverance," a truly magnificent range, which, after all, is the one feature of the scene unchanged and unmistakeable; if, at least, this was the impediment which prevented the return of the

1 For the name of Pi-hahiroth, see p. 37. The name of 'Ajrûd may, after all, be derived from the name of the Saint, "Ajrûd," who is said to be buried in the tomb beside the fortress (Burton's

Pilgrimage, i. p. 230), unless, which is equally probable, the name of the Saint was invented to account for the name of the place. See like instances in Chapter VI.