Another characteristic of the peninsula of Sinai may be stated. Though bare and desolate it is not absolutely barren. At certain seasons of the year a thin vegetation covers every valley. There are also some spots rich in grass and foliage, where groves of dwarf palm spread their feathery branches over fountain and streamlet, where the willow droops over murmuring waters, and where shrub beries of tamarisk and acacia extend along the glen sides. A close inspection likewise discovers, that in the wildest ravines, and on the shelves of cliff and mountain side, are tufts of herbage and succulent shrubs, on which goats and sheep find ample food. Streams are few, but fountains are numerous, and wells still more so. The greatest number of • living waters' is grouped round Sinai, high up in the adjacent clefts and glens ; and this circumstance makes that region tbe favourite resort of the native Arab tribes. In was in that same region the Israelitish camp remained for a whole year. Still the question may be, and has been asked, How could that vast body of people, with their flocks and herds, have found the means of life amid these desolate mountains ? The question can be answered. For the people themselves there was the daily supply of manna ; and when water failed from natural sources, the smitten rock yielded sufficient to satisfy the wants of all. As to the flocks and herds, they were never congregated together. Scattered over the whole peninsula, among its glens and upland plains, and away out it may be over the steppes of they had always enough of pasture. In the peninsula of Sinai, as on the northern plateau, there are numer ous evidences that in ancient times the mountains were• in part covered with forests, that the rain-fall was greater, and that consequently vegetation of , all kinds was much more abundant than at present :See Burckbardt, Travels, p. 538 ; Wellsted, 15 ; Stanley, p. 26). The acacia and tamarisk still grow in retired nooks to a considerable size. But every year is diminishing the number of the trees, and thus rendering the country more and more desolate. The Arabs cut them down for fire wood ; the Egyptians burn them for charcoal ; and no effort is ever made to secure a young growth.
The Arabah is a deep wide valley, running in a straight line from the Gulf of A kabah to the Dead Sea. From the latter it rises in a series of terraces, supported by wall-like cliffs, until it attains an ele vation of three or four hundred feet above the level of the ocean ; then it declines gently to the shore of the Gulf of Akabah. The greater portion of it is a bare and barren desert, covered in part with alight flinty soil, and in part with loose sand. Low shrubberies of tarnarisk appear here and there, and clumps of camel-thorn are met with, but these are its only products. Fountains are almost unknown in it. That of Kadesh is the only one of any note. , Along its western side runs a range of bare, rugged limestone hills, from two to three thousand feet in height. The range is deeply furrowed by long dry ravines, like rents.in the rocky strata ; and these form the only approaches to the plateau of Et-Tih. Most of them are impassable to human feet ; and as they cut far into the table-land, they effectually bar all passage along its eastern border. The Israelites therefore, in their approach to Kadesh from Sinai, must have travelled along the Arabah.
On the east side of the valley is a mountain range of a different character. Its southern sec tion is granite, showing the sharp peaks and deep colours of the Sinaitic group. The granite then gives place to sandstone, whose hues are still more gorgeous. This range formed the country of the Edomites, and has been already described. ['atm.,Ea.] Into the territory of Edom the Israelites never penetrated. They were compelled to turn back from Mount Hor, march down the Arabah, and pass round the southern and eastern sides of Edom. The a'esert of Arabia thus formed the scene of their last wanderings. It is a vast table-land, extending front the mountain-range of Edom eastward to the horizon, without tree or shrub, stream or foun tain. The surface is either bare rock, or white gravel mixed with flints, or drifting sand. The very Bedawin dread the passage of this great and terrible wilderness.' For days together the daring
traveller who ventures to cross it must hasten onward, and should the supply of water which he is obliged to carry with him fail, all hope is gone. Wallin, one of the very few who traversed it, says : It is a tract the most desolate and sterile I ever saw. Its irregular surface is, instead of vegetation, covered with small stones, which, shining some times in a dark swarthy, sometimes in a bright white colour, reflect the rays of the sun in a man ner most injurious to the eyes' (7ournal R. G. S'. xxiv . x35). Mr. Palgmve, who crossed it more recently, almost in the track of Wallin, also gives a frightful account of it (Travels in Arabia, i. p. 8, seq.) lt is far more desolate, and dreary, and terrible, than any part of the region west of the Arabah.
Such then are the general features and resources of that country through which the Israelites passed from Egypt to Canaan. It will be seen that the seveml stages of their journey, in so far as they are indicated by the sacred historian, and can now be identified, and the incidents narrated, correspond most accurately with the character of the country. The scene and the record are in perfect harmony. The difficulties and doubts conjured up by some recent writers disappear entirely before a thought ful study of the sacred narrative and a minute ex amination of the wilderness.
It may be well to notice here a very singular theory reg,arding the Wilderness of Wandering, originally propounded by Dr. Beke in his Origines Biblica, and very recently revised and expanded by a writer in Fullarton's Cyclopa.clia of Biblical Geography [ExoDE]. The theory is so strange, so totally opposed to established views of geographers ancient and modern, and so inconsistent, it may be added, with the whole tenor of the Biblical narra tive, that it does not require refutation. Its lead ing points are as follows The country of Ilfilzraim is not the modern Eg,ypt. Mitzraim proper,' says Dr. Beke, may be correctly defined to be the portion of Arabia Petrma which lies be tween the two heads of the Arabian Gulf (the Red Sea of geographers), and which extends northward from thence to the Mediterranean and the confines of Palestine' (Origines Bib. p. 291). 2. The Red Sea which the Israelites crossed, and in which the Egyptians were destroyed, was the gulf of Akabah p. 'So). 3. Sinai, the Mount of the Law,' was situated on the east side of the Arabah, and probably beside the city of Petra (id. 194). 4. • The Wilderness of Wandering' was the great desert of Arabia east of Edom.
This remarkable theory its authors endeavour to support by theories as remarkable as itself. Not only are the whole results of geographical research summmily set aside, but the whole physical con formation of northern Africa and western Asia is arbitrarily changed. It is affirmed that Lower Egypt, including the whole Delta of the Nile, was at the time of the Exodus beneath the waves of the Mediterranean. It is affirmed that the Nile emptied itself to the eastward of the meridian of Suez. It is affirmed that great rivers flowed through the desert Et-Tih, and that the peninsula of Sinai was like a well-watered garden. It is affirmed that a line of great lakes or seas ran across the whole Arabian peninsula, connecting the Red Sea (that is, the Gulf of Akabah) with the Persian Gulf. [See generally EXODE, as above, and Orig-ines Bib.] These startling affirmations are not merely set forth as possibilities, or probabilities ; but, to use the oft-repeated language of the authors, 'they are established beyond the possibility of doubt.' Most geographers, however, will take the liberty of doubting them. In fact few will, or can, receive them who, free from prejudice, carefully study the descriptions given in the closing chapters of Genesis and beginning of Exodus, of the character of the soil of Mitzraim, of its river, of its wheat, barley, and flax crops, of its brick-making and brick-built cities, of its fish and vegetables, and of its horse men and chariots. Could such descriptions by any possibility apply to the rugged mountains and dreary plains of the peninsula of Sinai, and the desert of Et-Tih ? The traveller who has passed through these regions will doubtless smile at the question.