68 BERTHA'S VISIT TO HER 



drink it; and even camels, if not very thirsty, 

 refuse to taste it." Irwin, another traveller, 

 says that in travelling 315 miles in this desert, 

 he met with only four springs of water. 



My uncle says, that Moses does not mention 

 every place where the Israelites encamped be- 

 tween the Red Sea and Mount Sinai, but those 

 only where something remarkable occurred* 

 Elim, with its refreshing wells and shady palm 

 trees, must have been delightful in comparison 

 with the desert they had passed. Dr. Shaw, 

 who visited that country the beginning of last 

 century, found nine of the twelve wells described 

 in Exodus ; the other three had been probably 

 filled up by those drifts of sand which are so 

 common in Arabia. But the palm trees alluded 

 to by Moses had increased amazingly, for, in- 

 stead of threescore and ten, there were then 

 above two thousand. Under the shade of these 

 trees he was shewn the Hammam Mousa, or the 

 Bath of Moses, for which the inhabitants have 

 an extraordinary veneration, as they pretend it 

 was the exact spot where he and his family en- 

 camped. From this place the Doctor could 

 plainly see Mount Sinai, or, as it is called in 

 some parts of the Bible, Mount Horeb. This 

 seems to have been the general name of the 

 whole mountain, while Sinai was appropriated 

 to the summit, which had three distinct eleva- 

 tions : on the western one, God appeared to 



