Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/117

 since it seems as if all the elements — not only winds, but floods and storms, and tempest in every form, with thunder and lightning — had been let loose to work the wildest ruin and confusion. It is narrow and steep, and so piled with rocks that it is quite impassable for baggage-camels, which have to be sent round another way, that is longer by some hours' march. Our camels had quite enough to do to carry us. Slowly and wearily did they struggle upward. As it was impossible for two to keep side by side, we straggled on one after the other, separate and silent. My spirits were such as might have been expected from a sick man, till after two or three hours we rose to the summit of the pass, when I heard behind me the voice of the dragomen shouting "Jebel Mousa!" That cry cured me in an instant. If it did not drive away the fever, it made me forget it. Instantly the tears rushed into my eyes, and all personal feeling was lost in one overpowering thought: There was the Mount of Moses, the Mount of God! On that domed summit the Almighty had descended in fire to give His law to men.

As we picked our way down the rocky pass, there opened before us, not a narrow mountain gorge, nor even a somewhat spacious wady, but a plain over two miles long and half a mile wide, which was enclosed by hills, and thus formed a natural amphitheatre. It was not level, but slightly descending, like the floor of some grand auditorium, so that all who stood upon it might be in full sight and hearing of a vision and a voice that were in the very focus of this vast circumference. Every eye could be fixed upon that awful Mount. Such an arena, a hundred times more spacious than the Coliseum at Rome, seems as if prepared for a great assembly and a great occasion. Never was there a spot more fitted for a scene so august. No sooner does one enter it than he feels that it must have