J. MILNE ON THE SINAITIC TENINSULA AND N.W. ARABIA. 



Suez to Akaba. 



Has Sheik el Ballan. — This place is about 50 miles south from 

 Suez, on the coast of the Sinaitic Peninsula. Here the hills, which 

 are approached from the coast by about a mile of a gradually sloping 

 sandy plain, are granitic. All the way from Suez the coast on either 

 side is bounded by high and rugged hills, in general appearance very 

 similar to these. Being destitute of vegetation, there has been no 

 check to the effects of disintegration ; and these mountains, which 

 probably would have been more rounded in their outlines had 

 they been protected by trees and herbage, now rise in bold and 

 often almost perpendicular cliffs, contrasting strongly with the 

 rounded granitic outlines seen in many parts of the British Islet 2 , 

 especially in Cornwall. Looking at these hills from a distance, they 

 appeared as if built up of so many triangular slabs which had been 

 laid over the surface of some preexisting hill. The tops or apices 

 of these slabs pointing upwards give rise to innumerable peaks, 

 forming prominent serrations on the ridge and rough points upon 

 the sides. The granite is of a greyish colour, and consists chiefly 

 of quartz and a black mica, little felspar being present. These 

 mountains are cut by numberless dykes, which are generally nearly 

 vertical, but yet often intersect each other at small angles. Looking 

 at these from the coast, they appear as so many well-defined broad 

 red or dark-coloured bands. At this place, Bas Sheik el Ballan, the 

 red bands were felsites, whilst those of a dark colour, which varied 

 from a black to olive-green, were felspathic porphyries. The two 

 might easily be distinguished by blows of the hammer — the former 

 being hard and compact, and having a clear metallic ring when 

 struck; whilst the latter, being much decomposed, sounded dull, 

 and readily crumbled. In places some of these dykes were 

 filled with small cavities containing a white glassy mineral, which 

 in several cases, having dissolved out, gave to the rock a vesicular 

 structure. 



In width these dykes vary considerably ; those examined varied 

 from 6 to 12 feet. 



Lying on the sand about a quarter of a mile from the foot of the 

 mountains, there are some curious slabs of sandstone from three to 

 six feet square, made up of readily separable laminae of | to ^ inch 

 in thickness. These slabs are hard, brittle, slightly calcareous, of a 

 gritty siliceous structure and nearly white. They probably come 

 from beds of the so called Libyan Sandstone, of which there is an ex- 

 posure somewhere near this place. 



Dr. Beke tells me that when travelling from Tor towards Suez 

 along this coast he passed over a surface of fine sandstone like the 

 one just described, on which there were numerous tracks of birds' 

 feet apparently as fresh and perfect as if only just impressed. 



Here the curious forms assumed by drifted sand could be well ob- 

 served. When sailing along the coast, from high up between sloping 

 walls of granite bounding the valleys, the sand can be seen descending 



