No. III
The scenery around the mouth of the Wady Tayi-beh,
where, as we have supposed, had been the encampment of the Israelites by
the Red Sea, is very wild and highly romantic. Northwards, the high, white
cliffs of the Gebel Hammam-el-Faraoon fall right into the blue waves,
while, as, looking southwards, the eye follows a long sweep of coast
running out to the distant point of the Abu Zeli-ineh, from which, long,
long ago, probably even before Abraham had gone down to Egypt, the ships
of Pharaoh carried away rich cargoes of copper, mined in Meghara or
Sarbut-el-Kadim. That long sweep of coast, which thus girdles in the
bright sea, and is itself hemmed round by a rocky wall of hills, is in all
probability the desert of Sin, into which we are told (Num. xxxiii. 11)
the children of Israel removed from their encampment by the sea. How this
removal was actually made seemed to us to be a question of some
difficulty; for the only passage between the open plain at the mouth of
Tayibeh and the wide sweep that stretches southwards from Murka, is by a
narrow strip along the shore; so narrow, that at full tide little more
than a foot breadth of sand is left between the sea and the rugged ledges
of limestone that join on to the high cliffs behind. As we rode along this
path, our camels' feet were often washed by the waves, and, while foot
passengers might certainly have managed to scramble along the terraces of
broken limestone above, yet all the cattle, as well as infirm persons of
the Israelites must have defiled, as we did, along this narrow strip of
shoreland. At certain states of the tide it may possibly be some yards
broader; but, even on that supposition, how tedious must the operation
have been, if we realise that upwards of two millions had to journey by
this one path ! Points of such practical difficulty as these lend great
weight to the theory, that the people did not all march in one body,
perhaps not even by the same road, but that, in several detachments, and
by different paths, they reached the central plains around Sinai, while it
is only of the movements of the head-quarters, as it were, and of the
chief mass, that we read in Scripture. A ride of about two hours, in the
fresh morning sea-breeze and the bright morning sunlight, brought us,
however, to the wide plain of Murka, and to the desert of Sin—a long
pebbly waste, skirted by high hills, widening out, where we were, into the
Murka, and then running in a broad, but narrower belt, away down the
coast. The Arabs call it El-Kaa, and it reaches down to the furthest point
of the peninsula. Our course lay across this Murka from corner to corner,
on to where, in the south-east, the Wady Shellal leads up into the vast
mountain land of the desert. Though here and there on its surface the
broom-like "retem" gave a sense of greenness, yet if barrenness could have
formed any excuse for murmuring, and complaining reminiscences of the rich
abundance of Egypt, certainly the desert of Sin would have afforded that
excuse. The hard, gravelly surface glares in the sun, the mirage flickers
in its level distances, and not a living thing moves through the air,
palpitating with heat. A green serpent, gliding swiftly to its lair, was
the only animal we beheld upon its wastes. Here it was, when all the bread
they had brought with them from Egypt was finished, that the Israelites,
instead of trusting God, began their murmurs against Moses and Aaron,
"who," they said, "had led them forth into this wilderness to
perish with hunger." Here it was that, while they spake, there flashed
from these same desert hills the glory of the Lord, and as they " looked
towards the wilderness," the white cloud was suddenly lit up with His
presence. It was here, too, that in the evening, probably from across that
sea, there came the great flock of quails, which, wearied with their long
flight from the valley of the Nile, fell thick upon this the first shore
they reached,—even among the very tents of the people. And when morning
again arose still another wonder here awaited the tribes, for lo! as if a
hoar-frost had fallen on the scorched wilderness, the whole plain was
white and glistening. Like the soft dew, itself the refreshing gift of
heaven, this manna-bread of God had fallen freely around their tents; and
thus once more, by that same shore, and amidst these everlasting hills,
might they have praised the Lord for a new deliverance, "which by His
strength setteth fast the mountains, being girded with power; which
stilleth the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumults
of the people; whose paths drop fatness, they drop upon the pastures of
the wilderness, and the little hills rejoice on every side.''
Before, however, we pass into the Wady Shellal, and
become lost in the mountain labyrinths of Sinai, it may be as well to take
advantage of our position in the open plain of Murka, in order to
describe, in a word or two, the general features of that wondrous region
which lies before us. He who conceives the desert of Sinai to be a series
of level wastes, with a huge hill standing somewhere in the midst, or who
fancies that there is nothing there beyond sacred associations to tempt
the traveller, would find himself strangely undeceived, were he to be
introduced into this almost second Switzerland of mountain glories, and
have his eye feasted by forms and colours of a character to be found, we
suppose, in no other corner of the globe. Speaking in general terms, the
true Sinaitic district is entirely confined to the point of the great
triangular peninsula that lies between the two forks of the Red Sea—the
gulf of Suez, and the gulf of Akaba; nearly all the rest of the peninsula
is occupied by the high, dreary table-land of the El Tihe. But the
southern point consists of a wild and tangled mountain-region, clustering
itself into three great groups—that of Um Shomer, St Catherine's, and
Serbal, which rise respectively to the height of 9300, 8705, and 6789
feet, and are of the most magnificent forms. Conceive mountain-ranges more
than twice the height of our own Ben Nevis, without a trace of
soil,—nothing but the great, iron granite, or porphyry, or greenstone,
towering up pile on pile, edge on edge, sometimes in a ragged fringe of
peaks, sometimes in a smooth, bold front against the sky. Except where
some wild creeper may festoon itself from some cleft near their base,
these giant rocks are absolutely naked. Not a wild flower nestles on their
ledges—not a lichen clings to their weather-worn and furrowed walls. At
first sight, such a condition might seem quite opposed to the beautiful in
every respect; but, in reality, it is far otherwise. There is a majesty in
these giant masses of porphyry and granite, venerable as some great Gothic
cathedral, that would be scarcely enhanced by the furniture of tree or
cottage. There is a grandeur in this perfect, this absolute nakedness,
that is very solemn and awing. But they have more than this. For besides
the mere variety and contrast of form, there is also the most wonderful
variety of rock-colouring. So that, although these mountains have none of
the soft green chalets, nor hoary pinewoods of Switzerland, yet they are
rich in another beauty. For if there is the bright beauty of the carpet of
flowers, there is also the more sober and yet gorgeous beauty of the
mosaic pavement; and it is this last kind of beauty that the mountains of
Sinai possess, in contrast to the brighter colouring of wood and pasture
land which prevails in other countries. In the Wady Shellal alone, we
counted from one spot, sixteen varieties of rock-colour, massed in
mountain forms before us—white, brown, pink, red, purple, green, in all
possible shades. None were bright— the effect of the whole was gorgeous.
And so the two principal elements of beauty—form and colour —were
preserved.
Through these naked mountain-ranges, the traveller
journeys by means of the "wadys" or desert valleys—that are quite
unlike the valleys of any other country. They are not mountain gorges, or
"hollows," not like the "glens" of our own Highlands, with their broken
edges and shaggy brows of heather, and perpetual murmur of deep-throated
"burn" far below, as it swirls and scoops the iron rocks into sounding
caves. The glen of the desert is a pebbly road, almost level, and having
an appearance as if some great torrent had filled the mountain ravine with
its sand and stones, and then, gradually lessening, smoothing the surface
even, had left it dry and silent. There is no deep central channel, no
gentle sloping upwards, no shelving oft'. The wadys twist themselves, like
serpents, deep into the heart of the hills—but ever running flat as a
road—while the mountain-walls sink into them on either side as suddenly
and steeply as cliffs into the sea. The object which most resembles them
is a Swiss glacier—say the Mer de Glace—twining itself up into
distant solitudes like a river—with, on either side, the black, naked
aiguilles, raising their rocky edges high into the blue sky. Speaking
generally, the wadys vary from thirty to two hundred feet in breadth, and
here and there bear upon their surface the feathery tarfah or tamarisk,
the thorny acacia, or the broom-like "retem." Along the bases of the
mountain, too, we find in many places green-nodding creepers, the
clustering lasaf or hyssop, and the wild ivy, in knots almost luxuriant.
Another characteristic of the desert is its intense
silence. When any of us for a moment wandered from the party, it can
scarcely be imagined what a painfully nervous effect that unbroken
stillness produced. It really weighed upon the heart. If you made a noise,
you seemed almost to hear the silence that followed. And this very
silence, combined with the nakedness of the mountains, and the narrowness
of their rocky ravines, served to produce another effect, viz., a wondrous
sensitiveness to sound. Like singing in some great empty hall, each note
was prolonged and echoed for miles. When you ran up a chord with the
voice, it was like striking the strings of some vast harp. Suddenly the
notes mingled themselves in a thrilling harmony, that ran off, ringing and
repeating itself, till wandering to the topmost peaks, it floated away in
the faintest melody. Many a time in the course of the day would we stop
our camels for the pleasure of thus hearing Tennyson's bugle song realised—
"Oh, hark! oh hear, how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, further going;
Oh, sweet, and far from cliff and scaur,
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing."
The report of a gun seemed to shake the mountains —the
roar would flap and buffet on from cliff to cliff, as if the hills were
shaken with a wild laughter; and then, when you thought it all over, again
you heard it caught up by Borne other rocky corridor, and rolling away in
distant mutterings. How grandly in such a land as this must have sounded
the morning shout of the ten thousands of Israel—"Rise, Lord! and let
thine enemies be scattered !" How much grander still the thunderings of
the lawgiving, when " even that Sinai itself was moved at the presence of
the Lord, the God of Israel."
And no wonder that such a land, thus sublime in
scenery, and so awing in its perpetual silence, should have been the vast
cathedral in whose still recesses have been nourished religious thoughts
that have told upon the history of man! I think we can, with all
reverence, trace a deep purpose in the providence of God, when He led His
chosen servant, Moses, to that "Horeb in the wilderness;" and can well
suppose how he, who had been first prepared for his great mission, by
being taught in the house of Pharaoh, "all the learning of the Egyptians,"
was, by the same wise counsel, to receive still deeper lessons, and a far
profounder education, amid the solitudes of Midian. For as he wandered
alone beneath the great blue vault, or rested under the awful shadows of
the mount of God, how, in the deep stillness of the desert air, must the
sense of his own utter frailty, and the perishableness of all that human
glory he had left in Egypt, have been brought home upon his spirit! As he
beheld the unveiled majesty of nature, how horrible must have appeared the
remembrance of the calf-worship, the unclean rites and mysteries ! and how
quickly, as by a flash of intuition, would he then realise the grandeur of
the tradition of his wondrous nation—that there is a Living God— a great I
AM, who had piled these mountains, who was knowing and caring for him, the
fugitive—for him, the little speck on the bosom of that vast waste—ay, and
gazing in upon him with an unslumbering eye! Surely it was also for a like
deepening of eternal truth upon the soul, that Elijah, in his hour of
weakness, was led into the same mighty temple. And Paul, too, for three
years, was prepared of God "in the desert" for his mighty mission. Nor
should we forget the influences of similar scenes on that other wondrous
assertor of the truth of a One God—the false prophet Mohammed. For,
however horrible and polluted his religion may be, I think we can still
gaze through the mists and veils of sin and self-deception, back to the
flush of an early dawn—to a time when the young camel-driver, as he rested
under these midnight heavens, was visited by the thrilling consciousness
of a Presence, who, hushing the voices of the world, spake home to his
heart—that thought —which, after the lapse of more than nine
centuries, and in spite of untold crime, yet commands the reverence, and
sways the hearts of millions of our race—"There is no God but One!"
Turning off from the plain of Murka, and entering the
Wady Shellal, we soon lost sight for ever of the fresh blue waves of the
gulf of Suez, and took our last look at Africa—now, but a few soft purple
peaks, extended far, far away in the warm haze. Winding up the Wady
Shellal, with its endless variety of colour, maroon and green and pink,
rich earthy browns and deep reds,—on amidst towering walls of rock rising
some thousands of feet against the deep sky overhead, we reached the
Nakb, or Pass of Buterah. These Nakbs have an important bearing in the
decision of the question already hinted at, as to whether the Israelites
really all marched en masse. For if so, only conceive of such a
body defiling across a point like this—and it is nothing to another near
Akaba.
After riding up a not very difficult ascent from
Shellal, we found ourselves near a col, and in a cul-de-sac,
apparently perfectly enclosed by high walls of rock. It was only when our
eyes were directed to the spot towards which the leading camels were being
taken, that we perceived a sort of zig-zag bridle-path running steeply up
one of the faces of the rock. Our Arabs made us all dismount, the
heaviest-burthened camels were partially relieved, and then one by one led
to the scramble. But such a clamour as that which ensued ! what a
hurly-burly arose among the hills, when the growls of the camels, the
yells of the Towara, the thunders of the dragoman, the imprecations of the
cook, were all pounded together in the hollow below, and passed away to
far-distant peaks in an unearthly rumble. One by one was each camel
put "to it;" but the path was such that it was not without some
difficulty, and a little danger the passage was effected. With several,
the great steepness of the ascent caused their burdens to slip back, when
down went crockery or poultry, as the case might be, and the camels,
walking solemnly out of their girths, accomplished the rest of the journey
in the manner which seemed evidently the most satisfactory to themselves.
One unfortunate beast, however, laden with two enormous canteen chests,
although the strongest camel of the party, stuck fast, just at the most
critical point. The path, everywhere narrow, was still more so at a
particular corner, where a rock jutted out. This rock proved too much for
camel and canteen chests; and, trembling from head to foot with fear, he
stood on the very edge of the precipice, all his strength, except that of
his lungs, fast leaving him the while. A few inches further out, and he
must inevitably have gone over—a fact of which he was apparently quite
conscious, as he leant hard against the rock. All that was needed was a
bold push round the corner—the great danger was, lest he should happen to
lie down. Our dragoman, as he saw his precious canteen thus in the
balance, was distracted. Sheikh Hassan tugged at the halter like a maniac—"Ya
Allah! Imsheh! Allah!" "A long, strong pull together"—some behind,
some before,—and round the corner, with open mouth, and roaring like a
steam-engine, came the "gemmel." The next moment he was calm as a stoic,
and with a quiet gurgle in his throat, moved on the picture of unruffled
patience.
Such is the Nakb-el-Buterah, and yet it is the best, if
not the only pass, into Mokatteb from the west. Nothing, however, could be
more picturesque than the defiling of our party up this sort of staircase:
the straining camels—the Arabs, with their bright head-dresses and their
long firelocks—the little spot so full of excitement—the desolation and
"eternal silences," as Carlyle would say, all around.