492 PROCEEDINGS OE THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May 23, 



The sandstone formation appears to have formed the great mining- 

 district of the ancient Egyptians in Sinai. The principal places 

 where this formation occurs are Serabit-el-Kadim, Wady Mughara 

 and the south of Wady Mokatteb, the west of Serbal, and the neigh- 

 bourhood of Ain Hudera. The sandstone is generally of a reddish 

 ferruginous colour, though its surface is for the most part coated with 

 a dark-brown oxide of iron. The principal Egyptian mines were 

 apparently turquoise-mines, not copper-mines as has been generally 

 supposed. Serabit-el-Kadim and Wady Mughara were the chief 

 stations. The turquoises appear to be distributed more or less in 

 veins, though their occurrence is very uncertain ; and Major Mac- 

 donald, who has been working the mines for several years, has 

 often spent weeks with no success, and then suddenly found a large 

 number together. 



I do not believe that any traces of copper are to be found either 

 at Wady Mughara, or Serabit-el-Kadim, excepting at the latter place 

 a thin film of silicate, too small, however, in extent for any practical 

 purpose. The specimens which I have brought from the supposed 

 slag-heaps on either side of the ruined temple on the summit of 

 Serabit-el-Kadim prove most clearly that they are not slag-heaps 

 at all, but merely a natural impure ore of iron and manganese. The 

 siliceous brown iron-ore, however, which abounds near Wady Mokatteb 

 and Wady Mughara, seems to have been extensively worked both by 

 the Egyptians and also, perhaps, by a less-civilized race after their 

 time ; and stone hammers, and flakes of worked flint are frequently 

 found on the mountain-sides. 



At a short distance from the mouth of Wady Shellal, on its south- 

 ern side. Major Macdonald has discovered a large heap of undoubted 

 copper- slag, which still retains a considerable quantity of copper in 

 it. I also obtained a small specimen of a rock containing a very 

 large proportion of carbonate of copper, and some pieces of malachite; 

 but I could not discover the locality whence they had been procured. 

 The sandstone abounds with salt and natron, and the water obtained 

 from it is always more or less brackish. In some of the wadies con- 

 siderable beds of curiously crystallized salt are found. Erom the 

 limestone I collected several specimens of fossils, consisting chiefly 

 of Echinodermata and Exogyroe ; but in the sandstone I found but 

 one organism, a portion of the stem of a fossil plant. A consider- 

 able elevation of the western coast of the peninsula has apparently 

 taken place. A few miles to the north of Tor, large quantities of 

 shells in a semifossil state, but similar to the existing species, are 

 found at a height of 20 to 30 feet above the present level of the 

 sea, and large blocks of coral occur at a still higher elevation; 

 considerable raised beaches also occur at Eas Mohammed. Yet I do 

 not suppose that any extensive elevation of the land at the head of 

 the Gulf of Suez has taken place in modern days ; nor does it appear 

 from the formation of the ridge of Chalouf-et-1^erraba, which 

 separates the Bitter Lakes from the Red Sea, that the two were ever 

 naturally connected, except indeed it were in prehistoric times. 



Of the agencies which are still at work in modifying the surface 



