FACTS AND FANCIES. 



113 



shores of the Dead Sea, and which still growl sullenly under the 

 accumulated rocks. In the time of Procopius, the legend runs that 

 men fled from Sinai' on account of the gruesome noises which haunted 

 it ; and modern travellers, notably Stutzen and Gray, declare that 

 they have heard at intervals a sound comparable to the dull heavy 



MOUNT SINAI. 



throbbing of a Cyclops' pulse. It might be said that one of the vast 

 arteries which provide for the circulation of the ever boiling and 

 seething flood of lava of our globe passes in this direction at an 

 insignificant depth below the surface. The springs of thermal waters 

 which well out at the mountain-base, the masses of bitumen and lava 

 scattered over the soil, the gigantic rocks which bristle over the 



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