Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/128

 which, he thought, might also take in a large wady on the right, making the whole view more extensive. To deter- mine this point, he proposed to ascend it. But the monk from the Convent, who accompanied us as a more learned conductor than the Arab guides, at once frowned on the suggestion by declaring it "impossible," that it "had never been done," that, in short, it was a spot "where no human foot had ever trod"! It did look very perpendicular, but Dr. Post was not quite willing to accept the assurance that it was inaccessible. Spying it round from different points, he thought he discovered on the top a small cairn of'stones, a sort of rude altar, a proof that human feet had been there, and human hands also; and while the grizzled old monk looked aghast at the presumption and almost im- piety of attempting to do what no one had done before, he set forward, telling one of the Arab guides to follow him. He is a capital mountaineer, springing from rock to rock like a chamois, and climbing wherever a goat could set its foot, and in half an hour he shouted to me from the very pinnacle of the peak which "no human foot had ever trod."

Meanwhile, with two other guides I had been slowly making my way up the rocky steep of Ras Sufsafeh. It is a pretty hard climb, but it seemed light compared with that of Serbal, and in an hour we stood on the very top. This is the peak from which it is commonly supposed that Dr. Robinson, after careful exploration of all the points of the Sinai group, concluded that the Law was given; and when I reached the summit and looked down into the plain of Er Rahah, I saw how the con- ditions were met, and no longer doubted that I was stand- ing on the holy mount. On the very front and forehead of the cliff stands a tremendous boulder, which seems as if it might have been the "pulpit" of the great Law- giver. "To this I climbed, or rather was dragged up by the