Geology of Mount Sinai and the adjacent Countries. 205 
a mile from that town, at the termination of some marshy 
land, is El-Wadi, where many date trees grow luxuriantly. 
On the east of this place is situate a thermal spring, which 
Wellsted names Hamam Mousa, the “ Bath of Moses.” The 
water has a temperature of 86° Fahr., is bitter and salt in 
taste, and of a sulphureous smell. At Tur, in the bay, are 
many coral banks, but its harbour is very safe; and on each 
side to the north-east and south, a patch of the tertiary lime- 
stone and marl occurs ; also a larger district of the same for- 
mation is observable a little south of Ras Sebil. Tur was 
formerly named Puitot, Raithu or Raithe: it is now the sole 
remaining town in the whole Peninsula. 
Ras Mohammed, or more fully Ras 46u Mohammed—‘ Cape 
Father Mahomet”’—or the ‘ promontory below Pharan,’’ is 
only a low point “ formed of limestone mixed with fossils,” as 
M. de Laborde describes it ; or, according to Captain New- 
bold, of a “ tertiary fossiliferous limestone.” 
The coast is rugged, and cannot be seen at sea further than 
three leagues and a half; and the land composing the Ras is a 
long narrow ridge, nearly divided, about six miles from the 
extremity, by a deep bay. 
On the north, about five miles distant inland, the chain of 
granite mountains called Gebel-el-Turfa, the ‘“ Tamarisk 
Mountains,” commences, and proceeds in a direction a little 
west of north to join the more lofty central mountains near 
Gebel-Um-Schomar. 
Gebel-Um-Khesin, written Om-Kheysyn by Burckhardt, is 
considered one of,the highest peaks of this chain, and is about 
5000 feet above the sea-level; a patch of sandstone existing 
around Sherm (a creek) was first noticed hy Ehrenberg, and 
so coloured in his map of that region. Wellsted relates that 
red and yellow earths (marls) abound in the hills near the 
harbour, and are used by the Arab sailors for painting their 
boats. A few miles north-east of Sherm, Burckhardt writes :* 
* Syria, p. 529. Burckhardt must here be understood to mean, that these 
were the only volcanic crater-like rocks, which he had seen in the Peninsula, be- 
cause he observed volcanic remains in two other places, viz., basaltic tufa hills a 
little south-east of Wadi Mukatteb, and basaltic cliffs on the sea-shore west of 
the Isle of Kureiyeh, See pp. 620, 507. 
