CHAPTER XLIX.

A VISIT TO MOUNT SINAI.

From Edward to Senior.

Jerusalem.

HAVE at last arrived in safety within the walls of the Holy City, and am as comfortably lodged as a civilisé can expect to be in a barbarous land, amongst a race of men who are really worse than savages, because they are debased by the spirit of bigotry, of which the pure savage is perfectly innocent.

I have encountered many dangers since I left Grand Cairo. I have followed the track of the Israelites in the Wilderness, with the exception of crossing the Red Sea on dry land, and a few retrograde movements, which we always carefully avoided; and have now my mind completely filled with images of rocks and deserts, wadis or valleys and wells, camels and tents, grottoes and tombs, ruins and desolations. It is in very deed the land of the curse that I have been perambulating-the Ire-land, the mother of the Church, the source of European civilisation, the fatherland of theology, literature, science, and the arts. What a horrid commencement we have all had, to be sure!

I was very fortunate in meeting at Cairo with a party of young Englishmen, barring a Scotchman, and an Irish

nothing else than an exhibition of fire-works on Moses' birth-day-squibs, Roman candles, and sky-rockets. Better deny it altogether, or make it an allegory, which is, at least, respectable.

Wells are most delicious things in the desert; I never enjoyed the luxury of a well so much. As for the camel, it carries its well along with it. But we unfortunate, illconstructed animals of the human race, are not at all adapted by nature for travelling in the wadis without loads of skin water-bags, which we must always replenish every day or two at some of the springs. The springs are therefore well marked; they are the inns and public-houses to which travellers look forward for a renewal of their strength and a revival of their spirits.

Though little more than two hundred miles, we took twelve days to travel to Mount Sinai, if it was Mount Sinai, which I merely take for granted, for everything I find is doubted nowadays. I should not wonder if, ere long, some ingenious traveller will suggest a doubt whether this be really the city of Jerusalem whence I now address you. I have my own doubts about most of the particulars told me, and by the Baconian system of induction, which ascends from particulars to generals, there is a sort of probability that, having once begun to doubt about the parts, I may at last conclude by doubting of the whole, and going out in search of the real site of Jerusalem amongst the dwellings of the dragons—I mean the lizards which are very abundant hereabouts, and were pointed out to me at Petra by my friend Bingham, an English clergyman, who was one of our party, as a striking

portion of its magnitude and its fat. How the cattle of the Israelites contrived to subsist in this horrid place I cannot conceive, unless the manna was so very abundant as to be amply sufficient for man and beast. I think that is the easiest way of getting over the difficulty. But then it may be accounted heresy to assert that cattle were fed upon manna, angels' food! Well, I can't help it; if we are not told how they were fed, we must imagine.

Which of the mountains is Mount Sinai I will not attempt to discuss; I just believed what the monks told me. And they showed me the place where the Angel of Israel wrote the ten commandments and gave them to Moses; they were written on white granite nicely polished, taken from the top of the mountain, the Jebel Musa, the hoary-headed mount of the communion. I saw the spot that they were cut from; they were very little. I had always imagined they were large slabs. I saw also the place where Moses, Abihu, and the elders of the congregation saw the Angel of Israel, and ate and drank before him, and the stone on which Aaron moulded the golden calf. I saw the golden calf itself, now converted into stone! and the identical spot on which Moses threw down the two first tables of stone, and broke them in his wrath. It surprises me very much that these two broken stones have not been found by the Roman monks, and lodged in some of the sanctuaries of Popery. I know that in the church of Santa Croce in Rome they have a piece of the rock on which the angel rested when he wrote the ten commandments. They have also the stone on which the cock crew to Peter. I have seen this stone, however, in Jerusalem; so that there must be a mistake somewhere.

I have also