Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/207

 more distant points; but this nearer sight we could have no more.

We were now in the Wady es Sheikh, which may almost be called the Amazon of the river system which winds about in this wilderness of mountains. It seems to be a misnomer to speak of a river without water, but the river is not always thus dried up. There are seasons when the dry bed becomes a torrent. The Peninsula of Sinai is visited at times by terrific storms, producing a sudden deluge, in which the barren wadies become the channels of great streams, and these mountain-sides are the rocky shores of foaming rivers.

But for the present we have no water — only the mountains. But these are so grand that we are never weary of observing their giant masses, their varied forms, and the marvellous richness of their coloring. There is a certain fitness in Mount Sinai being a solid mass of granite: that the oldest and most enduring of rocks should furnish the throne for the announcement of a Law which, in its essential principles of justice, dates from the foundation of the earth, and will endure to all generations.

We have now before us objects which are older than Moses. He lived over three thousand years ago; these mountains have been standing, the geologists will tell us, three millions! Whether they are right in their calculations or not, certainly for the data of the geological problem, it would be impossible to find a more interesting region. It presents peculiar facilities for study, in the fact that the rocks are all uncovered. These mountains have been stripped of their masses of vegetation; they have no such dense forests as those which cover the lower sides of the Swiss Alps. Here the rock-ribbed hills are all exposed, as if they would tell the story of their origin, and