20 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
perhaps, of those in Wady Nusb, which I have not visited. The 
turquoise appear to run more or less in veins, but their occur- 
rence seems to be very uncertain ; and it is difficult to under- 
stand how it could have been worth while for the Egyptians to 
carry on such extensive mining operations, unless the mines 
formerly yielded a more abundant return for labour than they 
do at the present day. Most travellers who have visited Serabit- 
el-Kadim have described two heaps of copper-slag lying on each 
side of the ruined temple on the summit of that mountain, and 
many have written of the copper-mines of Serabit-el-Kadim and 
Wady Mughara. Specimens which have been brought from these 
supposed slag-heaps prove, however, most clearly that they are 
not slag-heaps at all, but merely a natural impure ore of iron 
and manganese ; nor does there appear to be any copper at either 
spot, excepting a thin film of silicate which occurs at Serabit- 
el-Kadim. I have, however, in my possession some specimens 
of undoubted copper-slag from some heaps which Major 
MacDonald found near the west coast in Wady Shellal; and 
also some specimens of malachite and carbonate of copper, 
which prove not only that copper exists in the peninsula, but 
that it has been worked and smelted. 
In the neighbourhood of Wady Mughara and Wady Mokatteb 
beds of siliceous brown iron ore occur in the sandstone rock, 
which appear to have been worked at some period. Stone ham- 
mers and flakes of flint are found round this spot, which must 
either have been used by the captives of the Egyptians, who 
would appear to have been condemned to work in their mines, or 
by a later race — perhaps by the authors of the famous Sinaitic 
inscriptions, whom I believe further research will prove to have 
been a colony of the Nabathseans, established in the more fer- 
tile neighbourhood of Jebel Serbal, for the purpose of working 
the mines in the Peninsula of Sinai, between the years b.c. 200 
and a.d. 200. 
Considerable beds of beautifully crystallised salt are found 
in the sandstone district, as clear and white as it is possible for 
salt to be ; no fossil organisms, however, seem as yet to have been 
found, except a portion of the stem of a plant, and a few other 
vegetable remains. The geological changes that have taken place 
in the Peninsula of Sinai in historic times I believe to have 
been very small. Of the agencies which are now at work in 
modifying the surface of the country, the chemical action of 
the atmosphere would seem to play an important part in 
destroying the ferruginous cement, which binds the particles of 
the sandstone together, and thus decomposing the rock. The 
wind no doubt, bearing with it the drifting sand, also aids in 
the work of destruction. Frost and rain are perhaps the most 
powerful agents in the more elevated portions of the peninsula. 
