52 PROF. EDWARD RL'LL, Lh.t)., l\lt.S., I^.C.S., 0\^ 



the dome ought to stand quite at the end of the structure farthest 

 from the cupolas. 



In 1857, when about to start from Cairo for x4.rabia Peti'oea, the 

 late Rev. G. S. Drew asked me to take him into my party, wdiicli I 

 consented to do on two cojiditions — first, that he should not object 

 to my taking as much time as I pleased at Mount Sinai and at 

 the supposed passages of the Red Sea, and secondly, that I should 

 take time for a careful ascent of Mount Serbal. 



Mr. Drew, who was subsequently HuLsean Lectui-er and author 

 of Stndips in BihJe Lands and other careful and scholarly books on 

 Eastern travel, proved to be a very valuable and soundly critical 

 companion. Arrived at the foot of Serbill, we spent a Friday in 

 the ascent and examination of tliat mountain. Personal acquain- 

 tance with Lepsius, the German traveller and PJgyptologist, and 

 with Dr. Stewart the Scotch traveller, author of Tlie Tent and fhe 

 Khan, had given me somewhat of a bent in favour of Serbal as 

 being the Mount of the Covenant. But having carefully drawn 

 out from the Bible narrative the conditions required by it in the 

 mountain, I came back to my tent after tw'clve hours' absence 

 satisfied that in Serbal those conditions did not by any means 

 meet. The next day, Saturday, we reached Mount Sinai, and 

 did not leave it till the afternoon of the following Thursday. 

 Mr. Drew was at first somewhat impatient at ray taking so much 

 time, but I had come determined to pace every yai'd not only of 

 the mountain but of the Wadi Sebayeh, where tradition placed the 

 children of Israel during the giving of the law, and of the Wadj 

 Er-Rahah, to which valley Dr. Robinson, the careful and meritorious 

 American traveller, removed the people on the ground that there 

 was not room for them in the Wadi Sebayeh, in which removal 

 he had been followed by Stanley and other English travellers. I 

 knew that Robinson's position as to the lesser extent of Sebayeh 

 was denied by Mr. Strauss of Berlin, the Court Preacher, and by Mr. 

 Kel'ogg, an Ameiican artist. Moreover, these two gentlemen had 

 been in and examined the Wadi Sebnyeli, whereas Robinson did 

 not profess to have been in it, and Stanley's own map showed that 

 what he called an hour's walk from the convent, and which he 

 thought to have taken him into the Wadi Sebayeh, had only 

 taken him into one of its side openings, from which another 

 quarter of an hour's walk would greatly have astonished him. 



One difference between Er-Rahah and Sebayeh is this : Er-Rahah 

 runs end on to Mount Sinai at one end, Sebayeh runs across it at 

 the otlier end. From the small peaks of Sufsafeh the spectator 



