123 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [fEB. 34, 



this latter that first attracted my attention. This spring is not 

 mentioned in Baedeker's guide-book, generally so accurate. 



The total absence of ponds and lakes is a marked feature in 

 the physical geography of the peninsula of Sinai ; rain does at 

 times fall in abundance, but it rushes precipitately down the 

 wadis into the seas which bound it on two sides. Yet there is 

 evidence of the existence of lakes at some earlier period; in Wadi 

 Feiran, banks of earth 60 to 100 feet high rest on the mountain- 

 sides, especially in the angles of the valley, showing clearly the 

 former existence of a lake, the barrier of which was probably 

 near Hererat. I noticed also at the point where the Wadi Es- 

 Sleh enters the plain of El Gaa, unmistakable signs of an 

 ancient lake ; the wadi emerges suddenly from the mountain 

 range, and a circular depression from 30 to 50 feet deep, with a 

 perfectly level sandy bottom, and bounded by nearly vertical 

 gravel cliffs, now marks the bed of a small lake. 



The uninhabitability of the Peninsula is due to its sterility 

 rather than to its climate ; its sterility is due, I imagine, more 

 to the unequal annual distribution of the water, than to its 

 absence, and should the population warrant it, storage-dams, 

 easily constructed in the narrow granite-walled wadis, would to 

 a great degree remedy this defect. Perhaps at some future day, 

 when a crowded world thrusts its surplus population into re- 

 gions now hardly regarded as habitable, Arabia Petr^a will 

 bloom like a garden. Granite and limestone furnish valuable 

 soil-ingredients, and the climate is not unfavorable to semi- 

 tropical cultivation. 



We make brief allusion to the admirable porous earthenware 

 kullehs manufactured on the Nile, and familar to all Eastern 

 travellers. The extent to which evaporation from the surface 

 cools the contents is notable ; at 11 a.m. the temperature of the 

 air in the shade was 72°, and of the water in a goglet (kulleh) 

 only 53°, — a difference of 19 degrees. During the cold nights, 

 the water in our barrels fell to a low temperature, so that it 

 was agreeable to the palate. A party of Americans who as- 

 cended Jebel Katharine, while I was camping at Sinai, reported 

 finding ice near the summit in a shady ravine, and enjoyed the 

 luxury of iced water. 



Geological Note. — The geology of Egypt and of the Peninsula 

 has been described by Fraas, Holland, Hull, Palmer, Zittel, 

 Schweinfurth, and others, in publications accessible to those in- 

 terested. Fraas says of the Mt. Sinai group : ''This huge range, 

 composed of primeval gneiss and granite, has undergone no geo- 

 logical change since the time of formation of these crystalline 

 masses ; they have reared their majestic summits above the ocean 

 from the beginning of time, unaffected by the transitions of the 



