Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/108

 the two arms of the Red Sea — the Gulfs of Suez and of Akaba. The former seemed to lie at our feet, and following it with the eye, we could almost see the city of Suez itself. The Gulf of Akaba was farther away, and was hidden from us by intervening mountains. It lies in a depression, but over it and beyond it we saw distinctly the long range of the mountains of Arabia, as across the Gulf of Suez we saw the mountains of Africa; while southward rose the great heights of Mount Catherine and Um Shommer. What a glorious vision of mountains to be embraced in one view! One such sight were enough to repay a hundred times the fatigue of our climb to the summit of Serbal:

 'Twere worth ten years of peaceful life — One glance at that array."

And what memories did those names recall! That Gulf of Suez was the sea across which Moses led the Israelites; on the Gulf of Akaba sailed the fleets of Solomon; while turning northward the eye rested on a long line of white cliffs — the escarpment of a table-land which was the Great and Terrible Wilderness in which the Israelites wandered forty years. Thus a wonderful nature was chosen for a wonderful history. It is this mingling of the moral sublime with the sublime in nature which makes the great interest of the Peninsula of Sinai. Beyond all the stupendous altitudes of the mountains, beyond the Alpine heights and fathomless abysses, in power to stir the soul with awe, is the human history that has been enacted amid these great forms of nature. Serbal is clothed with such associations as with a garment. Long before the Exodus of the Israelites — long before Moses fed the flocks of Jethro by Mount Horeb — Serbal was an object of patriotic and superstitious veneration, the centre of a nation and the centre of a religion. Here were lighted fires to give warning to the tribes of the Peninsula, as fires were lighted on