Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/78

 cursing, there was a special appropriateness in the name it bears of the Wilderness of Sin! From this withering heat we found no refuge till we were once more in the gorges of the mountains, under the shelter of the overhanging cliffs. The day before we had come out of the mountains, and now our course led back into them. Turning to take a last look at the Red Sea (which we should not see again except at a great distance, from the top of Serbal and of Sinai), we entered a narrow pass called the Throat of the Morsel, which opened a way into the heart of the mountains, that grew more wild and grand as we advanced. Often we seemed to be shut in by walls, and had to come up to their very base before they opened their iron gates for us to pass through. The geological structure of the country had changed. We had been in a region of limestone, where the mountains were almost as white and glaring as the sand of the desert; but now the eye rested, with a sensation of relief, on huge masses of old red sandstone, the effect of whose rich colors was heightened by the outline of the cliffs and crags, which took on all fantastic shapes, looking like old castles and towers. One can imagine how they stand out against the sky when the sunset strikes upon them. We pitched our tents in a little valley that was set in an amphitheatre of mountains. Hard by we scaled the cliffs to penetrate the old turquoise mines of Maghara, that were worked in the time of the Pharaohs. The rocks still bear inscriptions graven upon them in one of the earlier dynasties. These take us far back in the ages, but the impression they give of long tracts of time is quite effaced by the mountains themselves. Our camp was at the foot of a peak which was one solid mass of old red sandstone, compared to the age of which the Pyramids of Egypt are but of yesterday.