May 5th.—At sunrise we left Abou Szoueyr, and ascended a hilly country
for half an hour.
After a short descent, which on this side terminates
the district of Sinai, properly so called, we continued over a wide open
plain, with low hills, called Szoueyry [Arabic], direction N.E. b. E. In
an hour and a half we entered a narrow valley called Wady Sal [Arabic],
formed by the
[p.493] lower ridges of the primitive mountains, in the windings of
which we descended slightly E. b. N. and E.N.E. On the top I found the
rock to be granite; somewhat lower down grünstein, and porphyry began to
appear; farther on granite and porphyry cease entirely, and the rock
consists solely of grünstein, which in many places takes the nature of
slate. Some of the layers of porphyry are very striking; they run
perpendicularly from the very summit of the mountain to the base, in a
band of about twelve feet in width, and projecting somewhat from the
other rocks on the mountain’s side. I had observed similar strata in
Wady Genne, but running horizontally along the whole chain of mountains,
and dividing it, as it were, into two equal parts. The porphyry I have
met with in Sinai is usually a red indurated argillaceous substance; in
some specimens it had the appearance of red feldspath. In the argil are
imbedded small crystals of hornblende, or of mica, and thin pieces of
quartz at most two lines square.
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