NEWBOLD ON THE SILICIFIED WOOD OF EGYPT. 349 
buting them over the surface of the land, and scattering them in the 
Nile, Red Sea and Mediterranean. 
While navigating the centre of the Red Sea I have twice witnessed 
the deck and shrouds of the vessel covered with fine sand blown from 
the Egyptian desert; and I have little doubt, from the assertions 
of the Arabs and a personal examination of the fine sand covering the 
western slope of the mountain of the Bell, on the Sinaitic peninsula, 
from which such singular musical sounds are elicited, that in many 
instances the sand is transported completely across the Gulf of Snez. 
On a hot calm day in the desert on the borders of the Nile I have 
seen twenty of these whirlwinds traversing the plain, and raising up 
columns of sand, pebbles, sticks and straws as high as the pyramids. 
Accounts of whole caravans having been overwhelmed by clouds of 
drifting desert-sand have been greatly exaggerated ; but sick pilgrims 
on the road to Mecca, travellers, and animals, unable from fatigue or 
other causes to keep up with the caravan, have no doubt been occa- 
sionally buried by them. In the great Mecca caravan-track from 
Cairo across the Suez desert, and in that of the Thebaid, I have re- 
marked many skeletons and carcases of camels and horses, with a few 
human remains interspersed, partially entombed in the sand. Many 
of the bodies had been dried up, with very great loss of weight, like 
mummies, the process of putrefaction having been anticipated by the 
scorching dryness of the hot wind. Many of the skeletons bore 
marks of having been stripped of their flesh by birds and beasts of 
prey. The drifting sand rapidly collects round and entombs carcases 
where left undisturbed. ‘ 
On the Geological Position of the Silicified Wood of the Egyptian 
and Libyan Deserts, with a Description of the “‘ Petrified Forest” 
near Carro. By Lieut. Newsoup, Madras Army, F.R.S. &c. 
Tue occurrence of silicified wod in many parts of the Egyptian and 
Libyan deserts has from an early period attracted the attention of 
travellers. In 1778 Sonnini met with fragments between Honeze 
and the Natron lakes ; and previous to his time petrifactions had been 
discovered in the bed of the Waterless river (the Bahr bila Maieh), a 
little to the north of the Natron lakes*. Horneman and others, who 
haye subsequently visited this locality, have however referred these 
fossils to silicified trunks of trees and plants; and Burckhardt, who 
saw some specimens brought thence in 1812 by M. Boutin, a French 
officer, states that they resembled precisely those which he saw on 
the Suez road, and supposed to be petrified date-trees. Similar petri- 
factions have also been lately discovered im the sands of the great 
Nubian desert, a little south from Abusambel, by Mr. St. John; and 
at Haagbarlak, about eight miles west from Ambukol, by Mr. Hol- 
royd. Some of the silicified trunks of Haagbarlak were fifty-one feet 
in length and twenty imches in diameter, and are referred by Mr. 
Holroyd to the Doom-palm (Crucifera Thebaica). The stratum was 
* Savary’s Letters on Egypt, Engl. Trans., yol. i. p. 14. 
