From Hence Upwards, And
Throughout The Primitive Chain Of Mount Sinai, The Water Is Generally
Excellent, While In The Lower Chalky Mountains All Round The Peninsula,
It Is Brackish, Or Bitter, Except In One Or Two Places.
The Wady Osh and
Wady Berah empty their waters in the rainy season into Wady el Sheikh,
above Feiran.
April 30th.—We did not leave our kind hosts till the afternoon, for they
insisted on my taking a dinner before I set out. I gave to their
children, who accompanied me a little way, some coffee beans to carry to
their mothers, and some Kammereddein, a sweetmeat made at Damascus from
apricots, of which I had laid in a large stock, and which is very
acceptable to all the Bedouins of Syria, Egypt, and the Hedjaz. The
offer of any reward to a Bedouin host is generally offensive to his
pride; but some little presents may be given to the women and children.
Trinkets and similar articles are little esteemed by the Bedouins; but
coffee is in great request all over the desert; and sweetmeats and sugar
are preferred to money, which, though it will sometimes be accepted,
always creates a sense of humiliation, and consequently of dislike
towards the giver. For my own part, being convinced that the hospitality
of the Bedouin is afforded with disinterested cordiality, I was in
general averse to making the slightest return. Few travellers perhaps
will agree with me on this head; but will treat the Bedouins in the same
manner as the Turks, and other inhabitants of the towns, who never
proffer their services or
WADY EL SHEIKH
[p.487] hospitality without expecting a reward; the feelings of
Bedouins, however, are very different from those of townsmen, and a
Bedouin will praise the guest who departs from him without making any
other remuneration than that of bestowing a blessing upon them and their
encampment, much more than him who thinks to redeem all obligations by
payment.
We returned from Wady Osh towards Wady Berah; but leaving the latter,
which here takes a direction towards Wady Feiran, we ascended by a
narrow valley called Wady Akhdhar [Arabic]. Here I again saw some
inscriptions on blocks of stone lying by the road side. A few hours to
the N.E. of Wady Osh is a mountain called Sheyger, where native cinnabar
is collected; it is called Rasokht [Arabic] by the Arabs, and is usually
found in small pieces about the size of a pigeon’s egg. It is very
seldom crystallized; but there are sometimes nodules on the surface; it
stains the fingers of a dark colour, and its fracture is in
perpendicular fibres. I did not hear that the Arabs traded at all in
this metal. In Wady Osh are rocks of gneiss mixed with granite. Gneiss
is found in many parts of the peninsula.
After one hour we came to a steep ascent, and descent, called El Szaleib
[Arabic], which occupied two hours. We then continued our descent into
the great valley called Wady el Sheikh [Arabic], one of the principal
valleys of the peninsula. The rocks of Szaleib consist throughout of
granite, on the upper strata of which run layers of red feldspath, some
of which has fallen down and covers the valley in broken fragments. The
Wady el Sheikh is broad, and has a very slight acclivity; it is much
frequented by Bedouins for its pasturage. Whenever rain falls in the
mountains, a stream of water flows through this Wady, and from thence
through Wady Feiran, into the sea. We rode in a S.E. direction along the
Wady el Sheikh for two hours, and then halted in it for the
[p.488] night, after an afternoon’s march of four hours. Several Arabs
of the encampment where we slept the preceding night had joined our
party, to go to the convent, for no other reason, I believe, than to get
a good dinner and supper on the road. This evening eight persons kneeled
down round a dish of rice, cooked with milk which I had brought from
Wady Osh, and the coffee-pot being kept on the fire, we sat in
conversation till near midnight.
May 1st.—We continued in a S.E. direction, ascending slightly: the
valley then becomes narrower. At two hours we came to a thick wood of
tamarisk or Tarfa, and found many camels feeding upon their thorny
shoots. It is from this evergreen tamarisk, which grows abundantly in no
other part of the peninsula, that the manna is collected. We now
approached the central summits of Mount Sinai, which we had had in view
for several days. Abrupt cliffs of granite from six to eight hundred
feet in height, whose surface is blackened by the sun, surround the
avenues leading to the elevated platform, to which the name of Sinai is
specifically applied. These cliffs enclose the holy mountain on three
sides, leaving the E. and N.E. sides only, towards the gulf of Akaba,
more open to the view. On both sides of the wood of Tarfa trees extends
a range of low hills of a substance called by the Arabs Tafal [Arabic],
which I believe to be principally a detritus of the feldspar of granite,
but which, at first sight, has all the appearance of pipe-clay; it is
brittle, crumbles easily between the fingers, and leaves upon them its
colour, which is a pale yellow. The Arabs sell it at Cairo, where it is
in request for taking stains out of cloth, and where it serves the poor
instead of soap, for washing their hands; but it is chiefly used to rub
the skins of asses during summer, being supposed to refresh them, and to
defend them against the heat of the sun.
At the end of three hours we entered the above-mentioned cliffs
SHEIKH SZALEH
[p.489] by a narrow defile about forty feet in breadth, with
perpendicular granite rocks on both sides.
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