[p.569] We returned to the convent of St. Elias, and then descended on
the western side of the mountain for half an hour by another decayed
flight of steps, into a valley where is a small convent called El
Erbayn, or the forty; it is in good repair, and is at present inhabited
by a family of Djebalye, who take care of the garden annexed to it,
which affords a pleasing place of rest to those who descend from the
barren mountains above. In its neighbourhood are extensive olive
plantations, but I was told that for the last five summers the locusts
had devoured both the fruit and foliage of these trees, upon which they
alight in preference to all others. This insect is not less dreaded here
than in Arabia, Syria, and Egypt, but the Bedouins of Mount Sinai,
unlike those of Arabia, instead of eating them, hold them in great
abhorrence.
We passed the mid-day hours at St. Elias, and towards evening ascended
the mountain opposite to that of Mousa, which forms the western cliff of
this narrow valley. After proceeding about an hour we stopped near a
small well, where we found several huts of Djebalye, and cleared a place
among the rocks, where our party encamped for the night. The well is
called Bir Shonnar [Arabic], from the circumstance of a monk who was
wandering in these mountains, and nearly dying of thirst, having
miraculously discovered it by seeing the bird Shonnar fly up from the
spot; it is closely surrounded by rocks, and is not more than a foot in
diameter and as much in depth. The Bedouins say that it never dries up,
and that its water, even when exposed to the sun, is as cold as ice.
Several trees grow near it, amongst others the Zarour [Arabic], now
almost in full bloom. Its fruit, of the size of a small cherry, with
much of the flavour of a strawberry, is, I believe, not a native of
Egypt, but is very common in Syria. I bought a lamb of the Bedouins,
which we roasted among the rocks, and although there were only two women
and one girl present, and
[p.570] the steep side of the mountain hardly permitted a person to
stand up with firmness, and still less to wheel about, yet the greater
part of the night was spent in the Mesámer, or national song and dance,
to which several other neighbouring Djebalye were attracted. The air was
delightfully cool and pure. While in the lower country, and particularly
on the sea shore, I found the thermometer often at 102°105°, and once
even at 110°; in the convent it never stood higher than 75°. The Semoum
wind never reaches these upper regions. In winter the whole of the upper
Sinai is deeply covered with snow, which chokes up many of the passes,
and often renders the mountains of Moses and St. Catherine inaccessible.
The climate is so different from that of Egypt, that fruits are nearly
two months later in ripening here than at Cairo; apricots, which begin
to be in season there in the last days of April, are not fit to eat in
Sinai till the middle of June.
May 21st.We left our resting-place before sign-rise, and climbed up a
steep ascent, where there had formerly been steps, which are now
entirely destroyed. This side of Djebel Katerin or Mount St. Catherine,
is noted for its excellent pasturage; herbs sprout up every where
between the rocks, and as many of them are odoriferous, the scent early
in the morning, when the dew falls, is delicious. The Zattar [Arabic],
Ocimum Zatarhendi, was particularly conspicuous, and is esteemed here
the best possible food for sheep. In the month of June, when the herbs
are in blossom, the monks are in the habit of repairing to this and the
surrounding mountains, in order to collect various herbs, which they
dry, and send to the convent at Cairo, from whence they are dispatched
to the archbishop of Sinai at Constantinople, who distributes them to
his friends and dependents; they are supposed to possess many virtues
conducive to health. A botanist would find a rich harvest here, and it
is much to be regretted that two mountains so easy of access,
[p.571] and so rich in vegetation, as Sinai and Libanus, should be still
unexplored by men of science. The pretty red flower of the Noman plant
[Arabic], Euphorbia retusa of Forskal, abounds in al[l] the valleys of
Sinai, and is seen also amongst the most barren granite rocks of the
mountains.
As we approached the summit of the mountain we saw at a distance a small
flock of mountain goats feeding among the rocks. One of our Arabs left
us, and by a widely circuitous road endeavoured to get to leeward of
them, and near enough to fire at them; he enjoined us to remain in sight
of them, and to sit down in order not to alarm them. He had nearly
reached a favourable spot behind a rock, when the goats suddenly took to
flight. They could not have seen the Arab, but the wind changed, and
thus they smelt him. The chase of the Beden, as the wild goat is called,
resembles that of the chamois of the Alps, and requires as much
enterprise and patience. The Arabs make long circuits to surprise them,
and endeavour to come upon them early in the morning when they feed. The
goats have a leader, who keeps watch, and on any suspicious smell,
sound, or object, makes a noise which is a signal to the flock to make
their escape. They have much decreased of late, if we may believe the
Arabs, who say that, fifty years ago, if a stranger came to a tent and
the owner of it had no sheep to kill, he took his gun and went in search
of a Beden. They are however even now more common than in the Alps, or
in the mountains to the east of the Red sea. I had three or four of them
brought to me at the convent, which I bought at threefourths of a dollar
each. The flesh is excellent, and has nearly the same flavour as that of
the deer. The Bedouins make waterbags of their skins, and rings of their
horns, which they wear on their thumbs. When the Beden is met with in
the plains the
[p.572] dogs of the hunters easily catch him; but they cannot come up
with him among the rocks, where he can make leaps of twenty feet.
The stout Bedouin youths are all hunters, and excellent marksmen; they
hold it a great honour to bring game to their tents, in proof of their
being hardy mountain runners, and good shots; and the epithet Bowardy
yknos es-szeyd [Arabic], a marksman who hunts the game, is one of the
most flattering that can be bestowed upon them. It appears, from an
ancient picture preserved in the convent, which represents the arrival
of an archbishop from Egypt, as well as from one of the written
documents in the archives, that in the sixteenth century all the Arabs
were armed with bows and arrows as well as with matchlocks; at present
the former are no longer known, but almost every tent has its matchlock,
which the men use with great address, notwithstanding its bad condition.
I believe bows are no longer used as regular weapons by the Bedouins in
any part of Arabia.
After a very slow ascent of two hours we reached the top of Mount St.
Catherine, which, like the mountain of Moses, terminates in a sharp
point; its highest part consists of a single immense block of granite,
whose surface is so smooth, that it is very difficult to ascend it.
Luxuriant vegetation reaches up to this rock, and the side of the
mountain presented a verdure which, had it been of turf instead of
shrubs and herbs, would have completed the resemblance between this
mountain and some of the Alpine summits. There is nothing on the summit
of the rock to attract attention, except a small church or chapel,
hardly high enough within to allow a person to stand upright, and badly
built of loose uncemented stones; the floor is the bare rock, in which,
solid as it is, the body of St. Catherine is believed to have been
miraculously buried by angels, after her martyrdom at Alexandria. I saw
inscribed here
[p.573] the names of several European travellers, and among others that
of the unfortunate M. Boutin, a French officer of engineers, who passed
here in 1811.[M. Boutin came to Egypt from Zante; he first made a
journey to the cataracts of Assouan, and then went to Bosseir, where he
hired a ship for Mokha, but on reaching Yembo, Tousoun Pasha, the son of
Mohammed Ali, would not permit him to proceed, he therefore returned to
Suez, after visiting the convent of Sinai, and its neighbouring
mountains. After his return to Cairo, he went to Siwah, to examine the
remains of the temple of Jupiter Ammon, carrying with him a small boat
built at Cairo, for the purpose of exploring the lake and the island in
it, mentioned by Browne. He experienced great vexations from the
inhabitants of Siwah; and the boat was of no use to him, owing to the
shallowness of the lake, so that after a residence of three days at the
Oasis, where he seems to have made no discoveries, he returned to Cairo
in the company of some Augila merchants. On his way he passed the wood
of petrified date trees discovered by Horneman; his route, I believe,
was to the south of that of Horneman, and nearer the lesser Oasis. I had
the pleasure of seeing him upon his return from Siwah, when I first
arrived at Cairo. He remained two years in Egypt, and then continued his
travels towards Syria, where he met with his death in 1816, in the
mountainous district of the Nosayris, west of Hamah, having imprudently
exposed himself with a great deal of baggage, in company only of his
interpreter and servant, and without any native guide, to the robbers of
that infamous tribe. He was a lover of truth, and a man of observation
and enterprize; the public, therefore, and his own government, have to
regret his death no less than his friends.] From this elevated peak a
very extensive view opened before us, and the direction of the different
surroundings chains of mountains could be distinctly traced. The upper
nucleus of the Sinai, composed almost entirely of granite, forms a rocky
wilderness of all irregular circular shape, intersected by many narrow
valleys, and from thirty to forty miles in diameter. It contains the
highest mountains of the peninsula, whose shaggy and pointed peaks and
steep and shattered sides, render it clearly distinguishable from all
the rest of the country in view. It is upon this highest region of the
peninsula that the fertile valleys are found, which produce fruit trees;
they are principally to the west and south-west of the convent at three
or four hours distant.
[p.574] Water too is always found in plenty in this district, on which
account it is the place of refuge of all the Bedouins when the low
country is parched up. I think it very probable that this upper country
or wilderness is, exclusively, the desert of Sinai so often mentioned in
the account of the wanderings of the Israelites. Mount St. Catherine
appears to stand nearly in the centre of it. To the northward of this
central region, and divided from it by the broad valley called Wady El
Sheikh, and by several minor Wadys, begins a lower range of mountains,
called Zebeir, which extends eastwards, having at one extremity the two
peaks called El Djoze [Arabic], above the plantations of Wady Feiran,
and losing itself to the east in the more open country towards Wady Sal.
Beyond the Zebeir northwards are sandy plains and valleys, which I
crossed, towards the west, at Raml el Moral, and towards the east, about
Hadhra.This part i[s] the most barren and destitute of water of the
whole country. At its eastern extremity it is called El Birka [Arabic].
It borders to the north on the chain of El Tyh, which stretches in a
regular line eastwards, parallel with the Zebeir, beginning at Sarbout
el Djeinel. On reaching, in its eastern course, the somewhat higher
mountain called El Odjme [Arabic], it separates into two; one of its
branches turns off in a right angle northward, and after continuing for
about fifteen miles in that direction, again turns to the east, and
extends parallel with the second and southern branch all across the
peninsula, towards the eastern gulf. The northern branch, which is
called El Dhelel [Arabic], bounds the view from Mount St. Catherine. On
turning to the east, I found that the mountains in this direction,
beyond the high district of Sinai, run in a lower range towards the Wady
Sal, and that the slope of the upper mountains is much less abrupt than
on the opposite side. From Sal, east and north-east, the chains
intersect each other in many irregular masses
[p.575] of inferior height, till they reach the gulf of Akaba, which I
clearly distinguished when the sun was just rising over the mountains of
the Arabian coast. Excepting the short extent from Noweyba to Dahab, the
mountains bordering on the gulf are all of secondary height, but they
rise to a considerable elevation between those two points. The country
between Sherm, Nabk, and the convent, is occupied also by mountains of
minor size, and the valleys, generally, are so narrow, that few of them
can be distinguished from the point where I stood, the whole country, in
that direction, appearing an uninterrupted wilderness of barren
mountains. The highest points on that side appear to be above Wady Kyd,
above the valley of Naszeb, and principally the peaks called Om Kheysyn
[Arabic] and Masaoud [Arabic].
The view to the south was bounded by the high mountain of Om Shomar
[Arabic], which forms a nucleus of itself, apparently unconnected with
the upper Sinai, although bordering close upon it. To the right of this
mountain I could distinguish the sea, in the neighbourhood of Tor, near
which begins a low calcareous chain of mountains, called Djebel Hemam
(i.e. death), not Hamam (or bath), extending along the gulf of Suez, and
separated from the upper Sinai by a broad gravelly plain called El Kaa
[Arabic], across which the road from Tor to Suez passes. This plain
terminates to the W.N.W. of Mount St. Catherine, and nearly in the
direction of Djebel Serbal. Towards the Kaa, the central Sinai mountains
are very abrupt, and leave no secondary intermediate chain between them
and the plain at their feet. The mountain of Serbal, which I afterwards
visited, is separated from the upper Sinai by some valleys, especially
Wady Hebran, and it forms, with several neighbouring mountains, a
separate cluster terminating in peaks, the highest of which appears to
be as high as Mount St. Catherine. It borders on the Wady Feiran and the
chain of Zebeir.
[p.576] I took the following bearings, from the summit of Mount St.
Catherine. These, together with those which I took from the peak of Om
Shomar and from Serbal, and the distances and direction of my different
routes, will serve to construct a map of the peninsula more detailed and
accurate than any that has yet been published.
El Djoze [Arabic], a rock distinguished by two peaks above that part of
Wady Feiran where the date groves are, N.W. b. N.
Sarbout el Djemel [Arabic], the beginning of Djebel Tyh, N.W. 1/4 N.
El Odjme, N. 1/2 E.
El Fereya, a high mountain of the upper Sinai region, N.N.E.
Zelka is in the same direction of N.N.E. It is a well, about one days
journey from the convent, on the upper route from the convent to Akaba,
which traverses the chain of Tyh. The stations in that road, beyond
Zelka, are, Ayn [Arabic], Hossey [Arabic], and Akaba. The bearing of Ayn
was pointed out to me N.E. b. N.
The mountain over El Hadhra, a well which I passed on my road to Akaba,
N.E. 1/2 E.
Senned, a secondary mountain between the upper Sinai and Hadhra,
bordering upon Wady Sal; extends from E.N.E. to N.E.
Noweyba, E. We could not see the sea shore at Noweyba, but the high
mountains over it were very conspicuous.
Wady Naszeb, on the northern road from Sherm to the convent, extended in
a direction S.E. to E.S.E.
Dahab, on the eastern gulf, E.S.E.
Djebel Masaoud, a high mountain on the borders of the upper Sinai, S.E.
b. E.
Wady Kyd, and the mountain over it, S.E.
The Island of Tyran, S.S.E. 1/2 E.
[p.577] Om Kheysyn [Arabic], a high mountain between Sherm and the
Sinai, S. 1/4 E.
The direction of Sherm was pointed out to me, a little to the eastward
of south.
Djebel Thomman [Arabic], a high peak, belonging to the mountains of Om
Shomar, a little distant from the Sinai, S.
The peak of Om Shomar, S.S.W.
El Koly [Arabic], a high peak of the upper Sinai, S.W. ½ S. At its foot
passes the road from the convent to Tor.
The direction of Tor was pointed out to me S.W. The rocks of the upper
Sinai, which constitute the borders of it in that direction, are called
El Sheydek [Arabic].
El Nedhadhyh [Arabic], mountains likewise on the skirts of the upper
Sinai, W. 1/4 S. Madsous [Arabic], another peak of the upper Sinai, W.
1/4 N.
Serbal, N.W. 1/2 W. The well El Morkha, lying near the Birket Faraoun,
in the common road from Tor to Suez, is in the same direction.
Om Dhad [Arabic], N.W. This is the head of a Wady, called Wady Kebryt,
on the outside of the Sinai chain.
Of the upper Sinai, the peaks of Djebel Mousa, of St. Catherine, of Om
Thoman, of Koly, and of Fereya are the highest.
In making the preceding observations I was obliged to take out my
compass and pencil, which greatly surprised the Arabs, who, seeing me in
an Arab dress, and speaking their language, yet having the same pursuits
as the Frank travellers whom they had seen here, were quite at a loss
what to make of me. The suspicion was immediately excited, that I had
ascended this mountain to practise some enchantment, and it was much
increased by my further proceedings. The Bedouins supposed that I had
come to carry off the rain, and my return to Cairo was, in consequence,
much less agreeable than my journey from thence; indeed I might have
been subjected to