Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/73

Rh a steep, indented line of light grey cliffs. Looking westward and southward across the plain at my feet, and through the gaps in the rugged sides beyond, I could descry in the distance the serried heights of Jebel Serbal, Jebel Mûsa, and the adjoining peaks, now coming for the first time into view, and giving promise of majestic scenery when we should approach nearer to them on the following day. Around, the granitic rocks, fissured and traversed by deep depressions, seemed crumbling into ruins; and, as if in contrast to this display of nature in her wilder forms, just below was our little camp with its five pretty white tents, its busy inmates all astir preparing for the night, and close beside, the Arabs gathered around their little fires were preparing their evening meal; our camels meanwhile were wandering in all directions over the plain in search of the tender herbs, and hopelessly (I fear) in search of water.

Next Sunday, the 18th November, might have been spent at rest, but there was no water, and we were obliged to move on. The morning was bright and sunny, yet bracing; the dew was glittering on the herbage, and we were surrounded by wild and picturesque scenery. Our march lay down a valley, of which the granite walls contracted more and more till they terminated at the lower end in two huge massive buttresses guarding the entrance to the pass, one of which is called Jebel el Gebal, and rises about 1,500 feet above its base. It can therefore be imagined with what feelings of gratification we surveyed this scene from the backs of our camels. Nor did this feeling end here, for on issuing forth through the giant gates of the pass, Mounts Katarina and Serbal were sighted in the distance. We had got a glimpse of the peak of Serbal before, “but now” (in the graphic language of Palmer) “the whole mountain rose up in all its azure grandeur before us.”

I have referred above to the beauty of the desert herbage. Few of those who have not personally traversed this region have formed any other idea of a valley in the Sinaitic peninsula except as a sandy or stony waste with a few plants and palm trees here and there where moisture is present. This, however, is far from being the proper view. The valleys are generally covered by dwarf plants throughout, ever varying by the disappearance of one kind and the appearance of another. Some are very persistent, others only local; while the thorny acacia (or shittim tree of Exodus), the tamarisk, the broom (or retem), and less frequently the date-palm, in some small degree compensate for the forest vegetation of more temperate climes.