Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/69

Rh they rose higher and higher into the air, and performed their gyrations beyond the reach of our guns or rifles. Looking northwards, the cliffs of sandstone in the foreground are seen to be cut into forms resembling walls, buttresses, and sometimes isolated tors. These were in places lit up by the rosy tints of the western sun, or thrown deeply into the shade; while far in the distance to the north the white escarpment of the Tîh bounded the horizon in the direction of El Nakel. This mountain is now celebrated as the site of an Egyptian temple. Turquoise mines have been worked from ancient times, and within the last few years Major Macdonald employed the Arabs in blasting the rock for these gems, having built himself a house and living in the midst of his workpeople.

Saturday 17th November.—We camped to-day in the Wâdy Kamileh at the base of some cliffs of sandstone bearing "inscriptions," but of so indefinite a character that to me they seemed well calculated to afford materials for equally indefinite speculation. In this place Palmer and Drake spent a Christmas Day; caught a Cerastes, and entertained the Arabs somewhat in the manner of the Egyptian magicians. The locality furnishes a favourite camping ground for the Towâra as there is a perennial spring, and the overhanging cliffs afford shelter from the sun by day, and from the dew by night. Further on, the sides of the valley opened out and the sandstone cliffs on either side afforded interesting forms of terraces with scarped sides, projecting headlands, tors, and castellated masses.

We had been passing for several days through a district containing both large and small game; but except for the tracks in the sand, and a glimpse of some sand partridges, we might have been ignorant of the fact. Bears, hyænas, gazelles, ibexes, besides hares, jerboas, and other small rodents, are said, with much probability, to abound. It is wonderful how these wild animals manage to conceal themselves from the eye of man. Long before he sees them they see him; or scent him from afar;—and off they go. The bear and hyæna lie close within dens or under thickets; the ibex disappears over a precipice; the gazelle vanishes across the plain; the hare or partridge crouches close to the ground, which they exactly resemble in colour;