10 
THE GEOLOGY OF SINAI. 
By the KEY. E. W. HOLLAND, M.A. 
F ROM our very childhood we have been taught to regard the 
Peninsula of Sinai as a hallowed land, yielding the palm of 
sanctity to Palestine alone. As the scene of the giving of the 
Law ; as the natural cradle selected by God for the development 
and growth of His Chosen People into an independent nation ; as 
the region to which the Prophet Elijah directed his steps in his 
memorable flight from the cruel Jezebel ; as the probable abode 
of the Apostle St. Paul, when he withdrew to Arabia after his 
miraculous conversion, it is indeed a land full of sacred asso- 
ciations. But, apart from its great Biblical interest, it is in many 
other respects one of the most remarkable districts on the face of 
the earth. 
Its geographical position has rendered it the connecting link 
between Asia and Africa. In the rocks which compose its 
mountains; in the shells which strew its northern and southern 
shores ; in its scanty fauna and flora, we may trace that bond 
of union which connects the physical characteristics of the great 
African and Asiatic continents. Bounded also as it is on the 
north by the land of Palestine and the Mediterranean Sea ; sepa- 
rated from Egypt on the west by the narrow strip of desert 
which forms the Isthmus of Suez, and from the once powerful 
kingdom of Arabia on the east by the depression of the Wady el- 
Arabah ; encircled on the south by the two arms of the Red 
Sea, now known by the names of the Gulf of Akaba and the 
Gulf of Suez, each of which has at different periods formed 
a highway for commerce between the Indian Ocean and the 
Northern world, the Peninsula of Sinai has long maintained a 
degree of contact with civilisation which the barren character of 
its dreary wilderness would otherwise have denied it, and it has 
played its part in the rise and fall of some of the greatest nations 
of. the East. 
The peculiar physical features of the peninsula, no less than 
its geographical position, have marked it out as a country of 
note. To them it has owed a large extent of the influence 
which it has exerted at different periods over mankind ; and it 
cannot but prove a subject of deep interest to trace out their 
leading characteristics and origin. 
