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sacred events connected with Mount Horeb, but it is only by very carefully comparing the several passages of Scripture relating to Mount Horeb and Mount Sinai that any very clear idea can be formed as to the events which occurred at each place. The name Horeb is undoubtedly used sometimes in the Bible to denote the whole district, rather than Mount Serbal alone.

Mount Horeb is known to have been a sacred spot before the Exodus, and Josephus speaks of the Divine Presence dwelling in these awful cliffs, "unapproachable by man." Moreover, the mount was associated by the early Church with events recorded in Scripture as having taken place at Sinai; and it was only after the founding of the Monastery of St. Catherine under Jebel Mûsa and Jebel Sufsâfa that the monks and anchorites of Horeb migrated to the monastery and its vicinity.

Assuming that Jebel Sufsâfa may be accepted as Sinai, with the vast plain of Er-Raha before it for the encampment of the Israelites, we can be satisfied that here in the Wâdi Feiran, under Mount Horeb (Jebel Serbal) Moses was feeding the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law; that here God spoke to Moses out of the Burning Bush and commissioned him to return to Egypt, and lead the children of Israel out of captivity. Here also Elijah came after his long journey from Jezreel and Beersheba, and heard God speaking to him after the earthquake in the "still small voice;" and some also think that St. Paul may have come here when, as he tells us, he "went into Arabia.”

Our course on Friday, March 15th, lay up the valley toward the Upper Oasis. This extended about four miles, and beside palm trees there was a dense jungle of papyrus and other reeds, twelve to fourteen feet high. Through this we had to force our way, of course, on the camels; but how the baggage camels got through I do not know. At length we made our way up the Wadi Feiran, passing the "Mountain of Conversation," which, by Arab tradition, is the mountain where God conversed with Moses. The Arabs still sacrifice here to Moses, singing: "O Mountain of the Conversation of Moses, we seek thy favour! preserve thy good people, and we will visit thee every year."

Passing El-Baweb, or "Little Gate," we reach the immense Wâdi es-Sheikh; for three miles or thereabouts most extraordinary cliffs of light yellow sandy mud bounded the wâdi on each side, to a height of about sixty feet, and above these were granite slopes and mountains. The explanation seems to be that these "basins" in pre-historic times were lakes; and as the lower ends were opened up by earthquake the water coursed through the sedimentary deposit, leaving the wonderful walls, with their

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