On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV.
LEAVING SINAI — PASSING THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS.
When one has made the pilgrimage to Mount Sinai, there follows the practical question, how to get back again. Travellers generally return direct to Suez, which is at once the nearest, the easiest, and the safest route. The distance from the Wells of Moses, where we took our camels, to the Convent, is one hundred and fifty-three miles, which can be passed over by vigorous marching in six days. But that is excellent travelling on the desert. A camel's pace does not commonly exceed two and a half miles an hour (one that can go three miles is a very brisk stepper), so that it requires ten hours on a camel's back to make twenty-five miles. But once at Suez, the slow moving and the hardship are all over. The traveller is within "striking distance" of any point he may wish to reach. He touches both the railroad and the telegraph, and is thus within the limits of civilization. He can return in a few hours to Cairo or Alexandria; or if bound to the Holy Land, can leave the railroad at Ismailia, and take a boat down the Suez Canal to Port Said, from which a night's sail will land him at Jaffa.
But it is not always the shortest route which is the most attractive to tourists. Having reached Sinai, we were not at all inclined to retrace our steps, and traverse the same wadies and the same wastes of sand as before. We preferred to take a longer way round, which, though it might prove rougher and more fatiguing, should still have the attraction of novelty.
Our first plan had been to go to Akaba, at the head of the Gulf of that name, a six days' march, and from there to Petra, four days, and from Petra to Hebron, or Gaza, six days — twenty in all, which, with four days at Petra, and four days of Sabbath rest, would make just four weeks. This route would take us to a point of great interest in the journeyings of the Israelites, Mount Hor, on which Aaron died. Petra too has in its rock-temples attractions well known to travellers. The only drawback to the pleasure of such a trip, is that this ancient city and the region about it are held by some of the worst Bedaween in all the East. Petra has long been notorious for its fierce and turbulent tribes, who demand enormous backsheesh from strangers who would pass through their country. Mr. Cook told me in Cairo that he had paid a hundred and fifty pounds to get a party through; that of late all expeditions that had been planning to go that way, had been broken up; and that he had declined to take the responsibility of sending any more. There were stories of travellers being taken prisoners, and held for ransom. At Sinai it was said, that even if we were to enter Petra, we might not be allowed to stay there — a presumption that was confirmed by the experience of a German gentleman and his wife, who left Sinai a few days before us. They set out boldly for Petra, and reached it, but were only allowed to remain over night, being driven out the next morning, glad to escape without the loss of all they carried with them, if they had not suffered also the loss of life. Even could we reach Petra, and be allowed to remain long enough to see it, we were told that it was doubtful if we could pass beyond it, for that the region between Petra and Hebron was held by tribes who were in deadly hostility, between whom there was a blood-feud, which found vent in constant fighting. Of course it would be the height of imprudence to venture between such combatants. In that case we should be obliged to return to Akaba, and then march four days across the desert to Nukhl to strike another "trail." All this would involve a loss, in going to Petra and returning to Akaba, and diverging to the direct route, of a couple of weeks time (it might involve much more if we were forcibly detained), which we had not to spare, as we wished to be in Jerusalem at the Holy Week. These considerations finally decided us, very reluctantly, to give up Petra.
After all this, was it not provoking that our friends of the other American party, who left Sinai the same morning, did go to Petra, and remain there three days, and did not have to return to Akaba, but went on direct to Hebron, and arrived in Jerusalem only a week or ten days after us? However, when they told us the story of their experience, our envy was subdued. They got through by the skin of their teeth, and this owing to the fact that they had a dragoman who was a Moslem from Alexandria (ours was a Syrian from Beirut), who had a personal acquaintance with the sheikh at Petra, to whom he had once rendered some service (I believe he had saved his life), and by whose favor he secured protection. Before starting, he told me privately that he thought it a rash venture, but hoped he could get his party through. He did get them through, but at the price of such extortions and annoyances that we were not at all sorry not to have followed their example. Had it not been for the dragoman's personal acquaintance with the sheikh, who stood guard with him over the tents, they would have been utterly "cleaned out." All the time they were there, they were surrounded, not only from morning to evening, but all night long, by insatiable Bedaween, incessantly demanding backsheesh, and ready to steal if the guard were relaxed a moment. A villain would come into one of the tents, and sit down on a trunk, and then demand backsheesh to get off! Another thrust a paper into the hand of one of the party, who took it, thinking the Arab might be offended at its refusal, when the rascal went off, but returned and demanded in a threatening manner ten pounds for the precious document! These little attentions of course made Petra a delightful retreat for a few days, even if one could not have it as a permanent residence. The dragoman told me in Jerusalem that he had to pay over a hundred pounds to get clear of the place! When they finally took their departure, they were followed by a last proof of attachment, in finding a Bedawee stationed on a hillside behind a tree, armed with a shotgun, with which he threatened to fire upon them if they did not pay some preposterous demand! To this they answered, not with money, but with powder and ball. After an exchange of shots, they charged upon him, and dragged him down, and finally left him tied hand and foot, and half dead, by the roadside. These things are more exciting to hear of than agreeable to experience, and after listening to their tale, we were quite willing that our friends should have all the glory, as they had all the annoyances, of such an expedition.
But between this difficult if not dangerous route by Petra, and going back directly on our path, there was a middle course, which would follow half way a return route to Suez — parallel to that by which we came, but farther away from the sea — and then strike off into the Great and Terrible Wilderness, passing midway between the Gulfs of Suez and Akaba, and crossing the great Desert of the Wandering, by which we should come up through the Plain of Philistia, and enter Palestine by the South Country, coming out at Hebron, or Gaza. This route would be entirely new, and in the latter part of it, at least, would have a spice of danger which would be an agreeable excitement. This decided our wavering choice.
With such a route marked out on the map, as we left Sinai we picked our way over the ledge of rocks which lies along the garden of the Convent, and rode down the narrow pass of the Wady ed Deir, keeping an eye on the cliffs which towered on the left. As we came near their base, we passed the camp of the other American party, whose camels were being made ready for their long march. We had now before us the plain of Er Rahah, but we were not to cross it again, nor to climb that fearful Pass of the Winds, but bore away to the right, passing the hillock on which Aaron set up the Golden Calf! A more authentic spot is the tomb of a Moslem saint, who was a contemporary of the Prophet himself, and whose virtues are celebrated in the Koran. Here the Bedaween of Sinai gather in great numbers at a festival every year, which they celebrate with sacrifices and feasting and camel-races, and other sports of the desert. At this point we parted from our friends, not to see them again till we met in Jerusalem. They kept to the east, while we followed the wady which circled round the base of the mountains. All this time we had been in sight of Ras Sufsafeh, and we could hardly go half a mile without turning our camels to take one more look. Thus we slowly retired from this mountain presence, half shrinking from it with awe, while yet it held us by the fascination of its sublimity. At length there came a bend in our course, and we lingered long before we could withdraw our gaze. We were to see Sinai again from more distant points; but this nearer sight we could have no more.
We were now in the Wady es Sheikh, which may almost be called the Amazon of the river system which winds about in this wilderness of mountains. It seems to be a misnomer to speak of a river without water, but the river is not always thus dried up. There are seasons when the dry bed becomes a torrent. The Peninsula of Sinai is visited at times by terrific storms, producing a sudden deluge, in which the barren wadies become the channels of great streams, and these mountain-sides are the rocky shores of foaming rivers.
But for the present we have no water — only the mountains. But these are so grand that we are never weary of observing their giant masses, their varied forms, and the marvellous richness of their coloring. There is a certain fitness in Mount Sinai being a solid mass of granite: that the oldest and most enduring of rocks should furnish the throne for the announcement of a Law which, in its essential principles of justice, dates from the foundation of the earth, and will endure to all generations.
We have now before us objects which are older than Moses. He lived over three thousand years ago; these mountains have been standing, the geologists will tell us, three millions! Whether they are right in their calculations or not, certainly for the data of the geological problem, it would be impossible to find a more interesting region. It presents peculiar facilities for study, in the fact that the rocks are all uncovered. These mountains have been stripped of their masses of vegetation; they have no such dense forests as those which cover the lower sides of the Swiss Alps. Here the rock-ribbed hills are all exposed, as if they would tell the story of their origin, and of an existence which, to beings whose lives are short as ours, seems like eternity itself.
The mere sight of these great formations raises a question even in the most unscientific mind as to the harmony of the record contained in the rocks with the Mosaic chronology. One thing all must admit, that the world is more than six thousand years old, and that the six periods of creation could not have been six days of twenty-four hours, but six successive epochs, during which the earth underwent great geological changes. No one who looks up at these giant cliffs, which the torrents have cleft asunder, can resist the impression of enormous lapses of time. These wadies have been produced by the action of water. As the Niagara river has worn its way back inch by inch from Lake Ontario,
"Notching its centuries in the eternal rocks,"
so here the forces of rain and storm and flood have torn their way through the everlasting hills. But what ages upon ages must have been required for all this! What cycles of time, measured not by years, must have passed, what millions of tempests must have poured from the angry heavens, and what millions of floods must have rushed along the sides of these mountains, to wear a channel miles in length through the solid granite!
But the admission of this does not overturn the cosmogony of Moses. By no means. It merely shows us that the words of the Bible have a grander meaning than we in our ignorance had dreamed. We need only to enlarge our interpretations to the vast proportions of the revelation which we are trying to understand. Now we see through a glass darkly; by-and-by we may see that the universe itself is the grandest temple of the Almighty.
Whether the Mosaic account of the Creation agrees in all points with the discoveries of geology, is a question on which men of science are the most competent to give an opinion. Some assume that there is an absolute contradiction, which no ingenuity can reconcile. There is no objection to the first chapter of Genesis which is more often urged, or with greater assurance, than that from geology. Some are so confident that this argument cannot be answered, that they are willing to stake their own unbelief upon it. Says Ingersoll: "If it shall turn out that Moses knew more about geology than Humboldt, then I will admit that infidelity must become speechless forever." Humboldt is certainly a great name to quote in controversy, though perhaps his greatness was more in his general survey of the vast realm of science, than in his complete mastery of any one department. If, instead of sweeping round the whole horizon of the Kosmos, we limit ourselves to the one point in hand, we may perhaps assume, without trespassing on the strict line of modesty, that we have in America a man who, in this special department of geology, is the equal of Humboldt, Germans themselves being judges — Professor James D. Dana of Yale College. "When I was in Germany," said one of the Faculty of Columbia College, who is himself well known abroad, "all the men of science whom I met asked me about 'that wonderful Dan-na' (pronouncing his name as if spelled with two ns), whom they regarded as the first scientific man in America, and as, in certain departments, second to no man living." This American professor, who is as modest as he is truly great, has devoted a large portion of his life, and he is more than seventy years old, to the special study of geology, and in this department he is the highest living authority, a place that would be conceded to him nowhere more fully than in the land of Humboldt. Yet it is he who writes: "To me the first chapter of Genesis is greatly illumined by the revelations which science has made. I see nothing in modern developments to shake my faith in its inspired announcements, or in any of the essential truths taught in the Bible."
In this testimony other eminent geologists fully concur. Some who have made a study of the first chapter of Genesis in the light of science, find that if there are apparent divergences, there are also striking coincidences, particularly in the order of succession of animal and vegetable life. So marked is this, that some men of science, who are also devout believers in Revelation, such as Hugh Miller and Principal Dawson, have stoutly maintained that they are in perfect harmony, and that geology furnishes the strongest confirmation of the truth of the Mosaic narrative. Whether they are correct in this, or whether, on the other hand, the reconciliation of Science and Revelation may not require us to modify at some points our Interpretation of Scripture, time may render clearer than it is now. A sincere lover of truth will accept light from every source, not only willingly, but gratefully. It is a poor tribute to the Bible to fear that the progress of knowledge will shake its authority. I believe too firmly in Moses to have any apprehension lest modern science should push him from his throne. Let the explorers and the discoverers carry their researches as far as they will (God speed them in their work!): they do but bring fresh materials wherewith to construct the temple of truth. If we do not at first see how the old and the new can be joined together — how they are but parts of one great system — it is because we see only from a few points and angles. Let us but rise high enough above the world, and we shall see it as one complete, rounded whole. All truth is in harmony with itself. There is but one Creator, who has revealed Himself both in His works and in His word; and when men are wiser than they are now; when they have climbed higher, and dug deeper, and looked abroad more widely; then will it be made manifest that the two Revelations are in harmony; that there is a perfect accord between that which came by holy men of old, who were moved by the Holy Ghost, and that which God has written with His own finger on tables of stone.
The mountains are older than Moses, but there is One who is older than the mountains, to whom Moses himself, perhaps while passing through these very mountains, lifted up heart and voice in that majestic psalm: "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God." This explains everything. Admit the Divine existence, and all mysteries are resolved. With God there is no reckoning of time. "A thousand years in Thy sight," continues Moses in this sublime ode, "are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." Even the geological epochs — though they should be to our measurements of time what the inter-planetary spaces are to the distances on our globe — what are they to Him whose existence is from eternity to eternity, from the illimitable past to the illimitable future?
But apart from any geological question, these mountains attract the eye by their grandeur. When they were upheaved by forces from beneath, they were thrown into the wildest forms. Sometimes they stand off at a distance in lonely majesty, and sometimes they enclose us in a narrow pass. In such a pass we rested to-day at noon, by a rock shaped somewhat like a chair, which is pointed out as the seat of Moses when he tended the flocks of Jethro, so that as we took our places in it, we were literally "sitting in Moses' seat." Another rock, with an altar-like form, is said to have been the stone of sacrifice on which Abraham bound Isaac. Pursuing our course in the afternoon, night found us within two or three hours distance of the Wady Feiran. We camped in full view of Serbal, which presented the same glorious sight as from the foot of the Pass of the Winds the night before we reached Sinai.
The beauty of the situation, however, did not prevent an early morning start, for we had a long march before us. For hours we were ascending, catching glimpses, as we look back, of the Sinai range. As we mounted upward, the surrounding summits sank lower, and we seemed to be emerging from the mountains. Then we crossed what in America would be called a divide, and for miles we descended a rugged, narrow pass, which brought us into another amphitheatre of mountains, where nature did not repeat herself, but varied the scene with new forms of splendor. Some of the views surpassed all description. There were mountains of red granite, that matchless stone out of which — because of its hardness, united with a fine grain, which takes the smoothest polish, and presents the most beautiful surface — have been chiselled all the obelisks of Egypt; and mountains of porphyry, of all colors from cream to black. In other instances granite was veined with porphyry and diorite, as if, when the mountains were upheaved, here and there a ridge or dome had parted under the mighty pressure from beneath, and through the rents and fissures thus made shot up streams from the boiling mass in the heart of the earth. The mingling of these elements produced a strange mingling of colors. The very ground under our feet was rich with color, for here and there it seemed as if we were passing over the ruins of an ancient city, some unknown Babylon or Nineveh, so thickly was the plain strewn with what looked like bricks, yet there was not a brick among them, but only broken pieces of red stone which had crumbled from the mountain sides. Now and then we would stop our camels to count the number of colors, in which we could easily distinguish all the hues of the rainbow. The most prominent of these were sober colors — dark brown, and red, and yellow, and olive green — the very shades which it is the fashion of the day to use in the decoration of our interiors. I leave to painters to imagine the effect of these dark, rich colors thrown broadcast upon the mountains! The coldest and dullest nature must catch some glow and inspiration in passing through gorges where the cliffs on either hand are like battlements of walled cities, and the loftier peaks like castle towers, from which are hung out banners in purple and gold. How can a traveller be unmoved who
"By this vision splendid
Is on his way attended,
Until at length he sees it fade away,
And melt into the light of common day"
The next morning we said good-bye to granite. The great mountain range which covers all the lower part of the Peninsula of Sinai, here sinks down like a wave in the sea, and is seen no more. It is completely submerged, not reappearing till it lifts up its head again in the mountains of the Caucasus, while over it here flows the dark red sandstone. New mountains come into view, which are often pyramidal in form, with strata as regular as the layers of the Great Pyramid, looking as if they might have been piled up by some race of Titans before man came upon the earth. The change of the geological formation is marked by a complete change of vegetation. In the soft sand little daises begin to put up their white heads, and now and then comes the note of a bird. Dear little songsters of the air, never did their music sound so sweet.
The event of the day was reaching Surabit el Khadim, a mountain of striking natural form as well as historical interest, in which the range of sandstone ends, and which served in the early days as a site both for a fortress and a temple. We dismounted from our camels, and under the escort of Arab guides, first descended a rough pass, or glen, on the other side of which rose an almost perpendicular wall of rock seven hundred feet high. We clambered up the precipice, turning hither and thither to get a footing on a narrow ledge, and often obliged to stretch out a hand to our nimble and sure-footed companions, till we reached the top, and found ourselves on a broad plateau, where are traces of copper mines that were worked in the times of the Pharaohs: how far back in the list of Egyptian dynasties, we cannot tell. But the mountain was probably a place of worship long before it was pierced by mineral excavations, if it be true that the temple, whose remains we find here now, was standing four hundred years before the time of Abraham! This would seem to justify the assertion that it is the oldest temple in the world. Like the priests of Baal, those of Egypt chose high places for their worship. This point commands a most extensive view. To the south rise the peaks of Serbal, so that the priests, while celebrating their worship here, could see in the distance the smoke of sacrifices from the altars of Baal. Centuries after this, in the time of Rameses II., whose daughter took Moses out of the bulrushes, it is said to have been occupied as a military station, for which it had an obvious fitness, as it commanded an outlook over a large part of the Peninsula. It is even urged that the Israelites, in the march to Sinai, probably avoided this route, lest they should be stopped by the Egyptian garrison.
The elevated point of view was of service to us, as it gave us a wide sweep of the country, and enabled us to outline the two routes before us, for we had come to the parting of the ways. It was now the third day from the Convent, and we had accomplished half the return journey to Suez. If the reader will look at the map, he will see that Surabit el Khadim is at an angle, from which one route turns almost directly west. By following this, we might have reached Suez by Saturday night.
But there was another route which turned to the northeast, which did not seem very attractive, as it was at once longer, more difficult and more dangerous, and of which we were forewarned that there was absolutely nothing to see! Murray says of it: "The route to Palestine by way of Nukhl presents no object of interest to the ordinary traveller. He had much better return to Suez, and go thence, via Port Said and the sea, to Jaffa."
No doubt all this was true. Yet to an adventurous traveller there is sometimes an interest in the very want of interest — in exploring what is most desolate and dreary. Opposite to us — perhaps eight or ten miles distant — rose a chain of mountains, that seemed islanded in the desert, a broad belt of sand sweeping round it, like an arm of the sea. How the white cliffs glared in the noonday! What a prospect of weariness in climbing those heights under the blazing sun! And once there, what awaited us beyond? Long marches over the burning sand! Fatigue perhaps to exhaustion, and weariness to fainting! Such was the prospect. Was it strange if one should hesitate a little before venturing into the unknown? Well! if we repented of our rash vow, made when we departed from Sinai; if we shrank from the fatigues and exposures and perils; there was still a way of escape; it was not too late to draw back; the broad plain beneath us that stretched westward, opened an easy passage to the coast. Which way should we choose? The Doctor turned to me to decide. One way was ease and safety and speedy deliverance; in the other was uncertainty and danger. Yet there was a temptation in the very idea of plunging into that which was comparatively untravelled. From yonder heights stretched out the Great and Terrible Wilderness, which seemed to beckon us by its very desolation. There was a fascination in the illimitable desert, in its vagueness, vastness, and mystery. It did not take me long to decide: one sweep of the eye round the horizon, and we clambered down the rocks, mounted our camels, and turned their heads towards the way of the Wilderness.