Geology of Mount Sinai and adjacent Countries. 219 
here it was covered with black flint stones. This Kaa, or 
plain, extends to the west, and its height above the Wadi-el- 
Araba is considered about 1500 feet. A ridge of dark-coloured 
granite hills is seen running off south-west. ‘On emer- 
ging from this long and tedious ascent,” Mr Bartlett says,— 
“the high western Desert expands in endless prospect—a 
vast plain of fine gravel covered with small pebbles, and varied 
by a long perspective of camel’s bones, bleached perfectly 
white, pointing out the track of the pilgrims across its 
boundless level, and the mirage spreads out a shifting suc- 
cession of blue lakes, with the tops of distant hills appearing 
like islands among its phantom waters.” 
Having descended this pass, and returned into the Wadi 
at the head of the gulf, some mounds are discoverable near 
the north-east angle, which are supposed to cover the ruins 
of the ancient Ad/a: these however ought to be excavated. 
eee 
(To be continued in our next Number.) 
On the Leading Characteristics of the Papuan, Australian, and 
Matlayu-Polynesian Nations. By G. WINDSOR EARL, Esq., 
M.R.A.S. 
The existence of a Negro race in the Indian Archipelago, so re- 
mote from the continent which is considered as the original seat of the 
race, has given rise to endless speculations as to how they got there, 
and probably will continue so to do until the end of time; for, be- 
ing a nation without a written language, and surrounded by others 
whose records are carried back to no very distant date, and whose 
_ traditions have become, from lapse of time, mere fables, this point 
can only rest upon circumstantial evidence, and therefore will ever 
prove liable to dispute. Their position, in many of the Jarger islands, 
as occupants solely of the mountain fastnesses, surrounded by people 
who evidently belong to a distinct race, has certainly put an end to 
those theories of the last century which attributed their origin to the 
shipwrecked crews of Arabian slave-vessels, and has led to a very 
general opinion that they were, in fact, the aboriginal inhabitants of 
_ the countries in which they are found. That their existence was 
not altogether unknown to the ancients, is proved by the maps and 
writings of Ptolemy the Alexandrian, who flourished soon after the 
_ commencement of the Christian era, and was the first to reduce geo- 
_ graphy to a system. In the last map of his volume, that which con- 
