SINAI. 185 



ment to marry the girls as they grew up to Egyptians, 

 and so to exterminate the race. 



One day the king's daughter, as she went down 

 with her girls to the Nile to bathe, found a Hebrew 

 child exposed on the waters in obedience to the new 

 decree. She adopted the boy, and gave him an 

 Egyptian name. He was educated as a priest, and 

 became a member of the University of Heliopolis. 

 But although his face was shaved and he wore the 

 surplice, Moses remained a Hebrew in his heart. He 

 was so overcome by passion when he saw an Egyptian 

 ill-using an Israelite, that he killed the man upon the 

 spot. The crime became known : there was a hue 

 and cry ; he escaped to the peninsula of Sinai, and 

 entered the family of an Arab sheik. 



The peninsula of Sinai lies clasped between two arms 

 of the Red Sea. It is a wilderness of mountains 

 covered with a thin almost transparent coating of 

 vegetation, which serves as pasture to the Bedouin 

 flocks. There is one spot only — the oasis of Feiran 

 — where the traveller can tread on black soft earth, 

 and hear the warbling of birds among trees, which 

 stand so thickly together, that he is obliged, as he 

 walks, to part the branches from his face. The penin- 

 sula had not escaped the Egyptian arms ; tablets may 

 yet be seen on which are recorded in paintings and 

 hieroglyphics five thousand years old the victories of 

 the Pharaohs over the people of the land. They also 

 worked mines of copper in the mountains, and heaps 

 of slag still remain. But most curious of all are the 

 Sinaitic inscriptions, as they are called ; figures of 

 animals rudely scrawled on the upright surface of the 

 black rocks, and mysterious sentences in an unde- 

 ciphered tongue. 



