the Island; made a survey, and walked round the Island, which they found to have 
a circumference of about 1800 English feet. De Laborde found a large excavation, 
intended for a reservoir, and a finely-constructed cistern, which from its structure appeared 
to be of a date anterior to the Fortress. His sketch of the history of Graia is very 
short;—after having been a kind of suburb to Elath, from the earliest period of the 
navigation of this Gulf, and its defence against tribes which it was difficult to subdue; 
it became the theatre of Christian valour in the time of the Crusades; but was wholly 
abandoned about the fourteenth century. 
The forms of the Island and its ruins, backed by the distant range of mountains, and 
the effect under which they are represented, give great beauty to this highly picturesque 
subject. 
CONVENT OF ST. CATHERINE, MOUNT SINAI. 
Tins Convent has been built in the form of a square fortress of hewn granite, and 
flanked with towers, of which one or two have cannon. Thus situated, in a country 
where, from the general helplessness of the Monks, it would not remain unmolested 
by the Arabs for a single day, its strength forms the chief security of the inhabitants; 
for it is accessible only by a projecting trap-door, guarded by another of iron, about 
thirty feet above the ground. The means of access are a capstan and rope, with a 
loop at the end, to which travellers fasten themselves, and are thus drawn up. The 
Convent is large, and resembles a small town, containing many buildings, several courts, 
and storehouses, a Mosque, with a minaret 1 and a Chapel celebrated as the richest 
in the land. It has an inexhaustible supply of pure water, from a well, which the 
Brethren point out to the traveller as that of Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, to 
which the great lawgiver led his flocks, 2 while he was yet living in obscurity in Midian. 
The Convent has been built upon the spot where, according to tradition, the 
Almighty first manifested Himself to Moses, and spake to him out of the burning 
bush, “ Cast off thy shoes, for the spot whereon thou standest is holy ground.” 
From the sacred character of the spot, many ascetics and anchorites established 
themselves in recesses in these Mountains as early as the fourth century; but tradition 
relates, that the Convent was established by Justinian, a.d. 527, on the site where a 
small Church had been built by the Empress Helena. 
1 The Mosque, a singular object in a Christian Convent, is said to have been built by Mahomet, 
who gave the Monks a letter of protection, a copy of which is still shown. The Mountain is visited, 
and highly venerated, by the Mahometans. 
a Exodus, iii. 1. 
