68 



Visii io Mount Sinai. 



[No. 3S, 



At the base of Horeb we passed the so called mound in \vhich 

 Moses cast the golden calf's head, and an Arab encampment. Their 

 simple tents of black woollen cumblies reminded me of those of the 

 wandering castes of S. India. 



These ancient burial grounds at the mouth of the convent valley, 

 said to be originally as old as the Prophet, resemble those of the 

 Malays, but have two stones erected within a raised circle of earth 

 instead of wooden pillars to mark the head and feet of the corpse. 

 The whole burial ground is also raised slightly from the level of 

 the plain. 



Instead of proceeding direct to the convent, I turned aside to see 

 a rock from which Aaron is said to have addressed the Israelites 

 when they danced round the calf in Er Rahah near the mouth of the 

 Wadi Sheikh, and certainly he could have hardly selected a better 

 situation for his pulpit, situated as it is near the junction of the wide 

 valley of Wadi Sheikh with Er Rahah and that of the valley of the 

 convent. 



The rock is of no great height or extent and stands isolated in the 

 plain. On the top are the ruins of some building absurdly pointed 

 out by the monk with us as Aaron's house. It is more like the 

 remains of an ancient watch tower than any thing. 



About a mile nearer the convent at the foot of Horeb, was shown 

 the granite slab on which Moses broke the tables of the law ; nothing 

 remarkable about it but a few surface indentations. 



We re-entered the convent just as night was closing in. 



Mount Sinai is a mass of granite, red in its lower portions ; 

 brownish in the central and more elevated parts, while the cliffs 

 composing the summit are grey. These colours are so well defined 

 as to be visible even at a distance. 



The granite rock above the chapel of Elias whence Moses is said 

 to have witnessed the battle with the Amalekites is a fine grained 

 granite with a brownish compact felspar and dark mica in small 

 scales. The rock of Aaron at the mouth of Wadi Sheikh is of a sin- 

 gular variety of porphyritic granite with reddish brown felspar crys- 

 tals. The grey granite of the peak is composed of white felspar 

 quartz, mica and a little hornblende and is small grained. 



The red granite is often porphyritic, and composes most of the pic- 

 turesque pinnacled summits, we view in drawings of Sinaitic scenery ; 

 it is also penetrated by dykes of brown, and black porphery pre- 

 viously described. 



