202 John Hogg, Esq., on the Geography and 
sent Sinaic district. Atthat craggy mount, Dr Lepsius was 
surprised in beholding many mounds of earth ; the presence 
of which he could only account for, by conceiving that this 
portion of the valley had, at an early period, formed a Jake, 
and which the general appearance of the locality seemed to 
confirm. As far as that spot, or nearly to El Bueb, Wadi 
Firan is considered the most fertile valley in the whole Pen- 
insula; for, from that upper extremity, an uninterrupted 
row of gardens and date plantations, called by the Arabs, 
“ El Gennain fel Wadi Firan;” “the gardens in Wadi Firan” 
extend downwards for three or four miles. The clear rivu- 
let before mentioned, springing out of the ground in a re- 
markable manner about a mile below El Bueb, affords plenty 
of water to that richly-cultivated tract. 
Gebel Serbal rises on the sowth* side of this beautiful val- 
ley, and directly opposite to the ruins of the very ancient 
Amalekitish city of Pharan. This magnificent mountain, 
sometimes called also Faran or Paran, is of granite, having 
five principal peaks, which rise like cones, and are distin- 
guishable from a great distance. The height of the second 
peak from the west is, according to Riippell (and which he 
considered the loftiest), 6342 Paris feet, or 6759 English feet, 
above the sea. Mr Bartlett having ascended one of these 
peaks, probably that which Burckhardt, in 1816, was the first 
to climb, gives the following graphic description of the moun- 
tain, and of the panorama from it:—* We stood on the top 
of a rounded edge of polished granite, dangerously shelving 
down, from which the precipice, on either hand of us, sunk 
sheer 2000 feet below. We could not see the chasm by 
which we ascended ; but Jooked across it to the other peaks, 
* Itis, I believe, to Burckhardt that we first owe the correct position of Mount 
Serbal, as laid down in the map published in 1822, which accompanies his post- 
humous work on “ Syria,” edited by Col. Leake. In the edition, Paris 1818, of 
the splendid map of Hgypt and the Peninsula of Sinai, made from the surveys 
of Col. Jacotin of the French army under Napoleon (‘Description del’Egypt”’). 
Mount Serbal is placed, in File. II., on the north of Wadi Firan, and the town and 
convent of Faran are on the south of it. Such are also the errors in Niebuhr’s 
“Mabula Itineraria” (Tab. XXIII.), engraved in his “ Descrip. de l’Arabie,” 
Copenhag. 1773, and in the ancient “ Peutingerian Table,” fol., Lips. 1824. 
