Geology of Mount Sinai and adjacent Countries. 265 



Descriptions of these engraved specimens will be found in 

 the letter-press accompanying the plates. 



Dr Kitto moreover writes (p. 99) : — 



" In the deserts bordering on the Isthmus of Suez, and particularly 

 in those parts where the hills are of friable strata, the soil is princi- 

 pally of a quartzose gravel, produced by their detrition. In this 

 gravelly soil, which envelopes the foot of the mountains, are found 

 many fragments, and ^ven entire trunks, of petrified trees, of up- 

 wards of ten or twelve feet in length. It is readily perceived that 

 these trees belong to different species ; but the palm-tree and the 

 seyal, or desert acacia, alone can be identified ; all the others offer- 

 ing, in their petrified state, characteristics too equivocal to allow 

 their species to be determined. The perfect preservation and the 

 size of the petrified trunks, thus found enveloped in the sands, not 

 embedded in, or forming part of any rocks, as well as various other 

 circumstances enumerated by M. de Roziere, appear very clearly to 

 intimate that they were not brought from any distance, but that they 

 pre-existed in those spots." 



The chief and most considerable mineral springs (as pre- 

 viously noticed), are found at Gebel Hamam, and near the 

 town of Tur ; they are thermal, or naturally warm, in both 

 situations. 



Russegger describes the former, or Pharaoh's Baths. — El 

 Hamam Faroun, — " as breaking out from the strata of lower 

 chalk, nearly on th'e sea level at the foot of the mountain. 

 The largest was 55°'7' Reaum. (about 156° Fahr.), whilst 

 the temperature of the air was 26°* 3' R. (near 91° F.) The 

 water deposits much common salt with sulphur. The latter 

 is sublimated on the sides of several caverns adjacent to the 

 springs wherein the hot vapours ascend."* Wellsted learnt 

 from his guides, " that pilgrims affected with leprosy, and 

 other cutaneous disorders, sometimes use them ; and, not- 

 withstanding the heat of the water is so great that the hand 

 can with difficulty be borne in it, these patients are said to 

 bear immersion for several hours."! 



The latter springs, called by some Hamam Mousa, Moses* 

 Baths — are situated in El Wadi, about two miles to the north- 

 west of Tur, but on the east side of the plantation of date 



* Robinson's Hiblical Researches, vol. i. 

 t WelUted, Travels in Arabia, vol. ii., p. 36. 



