54 DESCRIPTION OF ARABIA. 



supposition that the two must be twin summits of the 

 same hill ; an opinion for which there does not ap- 

 pear to be any solid foundation, since Horeb may- 

 be interpreted, and seems to have been used, as the 

 name of a rocky district or desert country, rather 

 than the proper name of any particular eminence. 

 The language of Scripture would lead us to suppose 

 that Sinai was a detached mountain in the midst 

 of a plain, and that the Israelites encamped around 

 it. Its immediate vicinity afforded pasturage for 

 their cattle, otherwise it would have been impossi- 

 ble for them to have remained so long in that quar- 

 ter ; and its name suggests that it abounded in some 

 species of acacia. Josephus describes it as an ex- 

 tremely pleasant place, and the discontented Israel- 

 ites sojourned here twelve months without murmur- 

 ing. These incidents certainly do not well corres- 

 pond with the steril neighbourhood of GebelMousa. 

 " It is not easy to comprehend," says Niebuhr, 

 " how such a multitude as accompanied Moses out 

 of Egypt could encamp in these narrow gullies, and 

 frightful and precipitous rocks ; but perhaps there 

 are plains that we know not of on the other side of 

 the mountain." There are valleys, however, at no 

 great distance, where their flocks might find pasture ; 

 and Shaw speaks of" a beautiful plain more than a 

 league in breadth, and three in length, closed to the 

 southward by some of the lower eminences of Sinai. 

 In this direction, likewise (he adds), the higher parts 

 of it make such encroachments upon the plain that 

 they divide it into two, each of them capacious 

 enough to receive the whole encampment of the 

 Israelites." Some travellers have observed, that 

 were this the real Sinai, it would be found to exhibit 

 traces of the stupendous phenomena which attended 

 the manifestation of the Divine presence, in the visi- 

 ble symbols of fire, and earthquake, and apparent 

 volcanic eruption. Burckhardt, however, could not 

 detect the slightest vestige of these supernatural 



