7 
demolition of trees. With, regard to the smaller shrubs and 
pasturage, these are far more abundant, even at the present 
time, than is generally supposed, and a slight addition to the 
rainfall would increase them enormously. 
It is wonderful to see the effect produced in a few days by 
a little rain : grass and flowers spring up on all sides, and the 
parched and withered herbage of the desert quickly forms a 
carpet of green, whilst the mountain crannies and basins 
produce an abundance of succulent herbs. 
It is a great mistake to suppose that the monastic gardens 
at Jebel Musa and Tor, and the Wady Feiran, mark the only 
spots where any considerable amount of cultivation could 
exist in the Peninsula. Hundreds of old monastic gardens 
are scattered over the mountains, and there are occasional 
traces of terraces for the growth of corn. 
Now when rain falls it rushes headlong to the sea, carry- 
ing all before it ; but the monks, and possibly the Amale- 
kites before them, placed rows of stones across the gullies, 
which checked the flow of the water, and caused deposits of 
earth, which were carefully planted, and the water filtering 
from one to the other added to the fertility of the country, 
instead of destroying it. 
Its capabilities for supporting life, vastly underrated at 
present, were probably in ancient times considerably greater, 
and the water-supply in the granitic district at least is even 
now tolerably abundant, and many a refreshing swim have I 
had in clear deep pools, fringed with maiden-hair fern. 
In endeavouring to trace the route of the Israelites a diffi- 
culty meets one at the outset. Where was Baineses, their 
starting-point ? Brugsch Bey identifies it with Tanis, or San, 
on the evidence afforded by inscriptions and papyri. But if 
there, the Israelites would have had to cross the Pelusiac, or 
eastern branch of the Nile, an undertaking which the history 
of the Exodus, short as it is, would hardly have passed over 
in silence. Dr. Beke's theory, that the Land of Goshen was 
situated to the east of the Isthmus of Suez, has nothing in its 
favour, except that it brings Goshen nearer to the Gulf of 
Akaba, which he believed to be the “ Bed Sea 33 of the Exodus. 
That district, however, certainly never had any rivers to 
supply the fish, which lived in the Israelites' memory as one 
of the luxuries of Egypt. 
Others would place Bameses at Wady Tumeilat, near the 
present freshwater canal between Zagazig and Ismailia. At 
all events, the general position of the Land of Goshen on the 
extreme north-east of Egypt, and corresponding with the 
modern province of Es Shurkiyeh, appears to be satisfactorily 
