On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
THE ASCENT OF MOUNT SERBAL.
We had not yet come unto Mount Sinai, but we had come to another mountain which disputes with Sinai the claim to be the Mount of the Law, and which cannot be passed by without a fixed and steady gaze. No traveller on the desert fails to see Serbal, for it is of such imposing majesty, standing alone and dwarfing all surrounding heights, that it is seen afar off above the tops of the mountains. Nor is it visible only on the Peninsula, but at a great distance beyond, both on land and sea. Those who pass up and down the Red Sea catch sight of it as the great object on the horizon; and beyond the waters both of Suez and of Akaba, it is seen at once from the shores of Africa and of Arabia.
I shall never forget a view of Serbal that we had from the top of the Nakb el-Budra (the Pass of the Sword's Point), one or two long marches before we came under his shadow. We had been all day moving slowly through a succession of wadies, which were like mountain gorges, when we came into a narrow pass, where our advance was stopped by high barriers of rock, which we scaled only by turning from side to side as by a winding stair. When we had climbed to the top, a new horizon was opened before us far to the South, which uncovered a sea of mountains, in the midst of which uprose Serbal, towering above them all. From that moment we never lost sight of this monarch of mountains, but were all the while approaching nearer and nearer, till now we were in his very presence.
But to see Serbal is one thing, and to ascend it is quite another. This is not in the usual programme of a pilgrimage to Mount Sinai. Although the caravan route winds round its base, most travellers only look up with awe at that majestic form, and pass by at a respectful distance. They almost shudder at the sight of its tremendous cliffs, and are quite willing to leave them unscaled. But Dr. Post, who is of an aspiring mind in such matters, was not so easily satisfied. No sooner did Serbal show its head in the distance than it seemed to fascinate him, and he began to throw out hints like these: "What a grand thing it would be to climb yonder awful height!" and "How far below us, in every sense, should we leave ordinary pilgrims!" until he gradually poisoned my innocent mind with his ambition. The dragoman said nothing, for he was not allowed to say anything, his only place being to carry out the will of his imperious masters. He only suggested meekly that, as it was a long day's march, we should need to start very early in the morning. To this we had no objection. Indeed having once got the idea into our heads, the only way to get it out was to make the attempt. This once decided upon, the idea haunted me even in my dreams. Half a dozen times in the night I rose and went to the door of the tent, and looked out to see if there were not some faint forerunner of the dawn; but the full moon still rode high in heaven, and poured down a flood of light on mountain and valley, and rock and ruin, and on the white tents, around which Arabs and camels were sleeping motionless as if in death. But long before daybreak there was a stir in the camp. The fire was lighted, the cook was bustling about, and the coffee sent forth a sweet smell. The cameleers had brought up our beasts to the tents, where they were lying stretched on the soft sand, waiting for their riders. The moon had but just dipped behind the hills, and the sun had not yet given a sign of his coming, when we vaulted into the saddle and set out upon our march, following a trail up a wady worn in the course of ages by a torrent, which had washed down great boulders that at every step blocked our advance. The path turned and twisted, till it seemed almost impossible to force a passage. How far we went on camels' backs, I cannot tell; certainly not over three or four miles, for it would have taken a quick stepper to make two miles an hour up such a pass. This slow march would have been very tiresome, and wearied us even at the beginning of the day, were it not that our eyes were soon fascinated by the scene which was beginning to dawn upon us. As we crept slowly upward, streaks of light announced the coming of the day; and as soon as the sun rose above the Eastern mountains, it struck across the valley to the grander heights before us. Serbal, though standing alone, is not a solitary peak, but rather a group, or a giant mass, splintered into columnar shapes, thus making five separate columns, which were touched in succession by the sun as he rose higher and higher. The effect recalled a memorable sunrise on the Himalayas, with this difference, that there it fell on glittering pinnacles of snow, where now it lighted up only great masses of rock; but as these were of red granite, they seemed to be kindled by the morning sun, so that if the Persian fire-worshippers had been here, they might well have uncovered their heads, and stood silent and reverent at the sight of those flaming altars in the sky.
For about two hours our camels kept on their toilsome climb, till we came to a point where they could not move another step. Here was just space among the rocks for them to kneel down, and be lightened of their burdens. The rest of the ascent must be made on foot. Our way led up a chasm that cleft in twain two of the massive forms of Serbal. We started, not very vigorously, but slowly, to reserve our strength. We soon found that we had need of it, for we were in for a task requiring our utmost endurance. The ascent was often at an angle of forty-five degrees; indeed in many cases it was almost perpendicular. It was climbing over huge granite boulders weighing hundreds of tons, or turning around them. Sometimes we fell upon our hands and feet, and could only crawl where we could not walk upright. So we went, feeling our way around the points of rocks, and creeping along the edge of precipices, where a single false step would have given us a fearful, probably a fatal, plunge. Indeed I could not have got on at all but for the Arabs, who led the way, springing forward like catamounts, and clinging to the rocks with their bare feet, and reaching out their long, sinewy arms to grasp mine, which were extended upward, while another swarthy creature would come behind to give me a "boost." Once or twice I sank down quite exhausted, and the dragoman cast on me a look of pity as he said "I so sorry!" and even Dr. Post, who thought I had found the undertaking more than I bargained for, advised me to give it up. But it is not in my nature to give up a thing when once I have undertaken it. I asked only for an occasional breathing spell.
While lying stretched on the rocks, lest the scene should become too tragic, it was relieved by a touch of the comic, which is seldom absent in the society of my irrepressible countrymen. Accompanying us up the mountain was the other party of which I have spoken, in which were a couple of college students. Young America does not pay much respect to times and places. Just as my thoughts were becoming subdued to a solemn mood, that might best find expression in the fearful lines beginning
"My thoughts on awful subjects roll,"
I heard coming round the cliff a strain of a different character. It was not exactly Church-music, and yet it sounded familiar. Where had I heard it? It began
"The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device —
Excelsior!"
and was followed by the chorus so familiar to college boys, and which is given out with the greater force of lungs, as it is incomprehensible in meaning: "Upidee! Upida!" And as if this were not enough to banish all the sacred associations of the place, next came this still more irreverential strain:
"The waiter roared it through the hall —
We don't give bread with one fishball!"
These were strange sounds indeed to be echoed back from the cliffs and down the abysses of Mount Serbal. But they did me more good than the most majestic psalm, for the sudden revulsion of feeling made me forget my weariness, and a few minutes enabled me to recover breath for a fresh spring. And so at last, pushed and pulled and hauled by the Arabs, and almost carried in their black arms, I reached the top. The ascent had taken six hours.
We found the summit not a peak so much as a dome — a rounded mass of granite. Serbal is about the height of Mount Washington, but this gives no impression of its real grandeur: for while Mount Washington rises by a gradual slope, its sides being covered with forests, Serbal rises so perpendicularly that its five separate masses appear, as I have said, like gigantic columns, lifting their heads against the sky. We stood on the brow of a precipice, which might well make one shudder as he advanced to the point of the cliff, and looked over to a depth of four thousand feet.
And what at last did we gain by all this? Only the disappointment that waits on ambition? or enough to repay us for the fatigue of this tremendous climb? We saw beneath us a panorama as extensive as that seen from the Righi; only, instead of the smiling cantons of Switzerland, with green fields and waving forests and crystal lakes, we saw only the barrenness of utter desolation, yet in such awful forms as produced an impression of indescribable grandeur. All round us the horizon was piled with mountains. Indeed the whole Peninsula is a sea of mountains, in which peaks on peaks are tossed up like waves. It seems as if they had been thrown up out of a lake of fire; as if in a remote geological period, when the body of our planet was a molten mass, and material forces were acting with an intensity and violence of which we have no conception, in some tremendous convulsion the flaming crests were tossed against the sky, and then suddenly arrested by the Creator's hand, which held them fixed in their utmost wildness, so to remain forever. But it may be a question whether this jagged outline was caused by throwing up or by wearing down. My companion, surveying the scene, not "with a poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling," but with the patient observation of science, reports that "these peaks are all water-worn, the result of the gradual degradation of masses which were probably overlaid by stratified rocks, and entombed under the sea; and that after their submersion and emergence, and the wearing away of their sandstone and limestone coverings, the granite masses were splintered by lightning, shivered by frost, cracked by the heat of the sun, and worn by storms, into their present forms." Hence their infinite variety. There is not one long chain, like the Pyrenees or the Apennines, of a general average height and form, but innumerable peaks, sharp and pointed, as if piercing the sky, while other summits are broad and dome-like, as if the very heavens might rest on the support of such "everlasting hills." And these mountains are unlike those of other countries in being more barren and desolate. I have seen mountains in all parts of the world, and have found in almost every case that they had some feature of beauty mingled with their ruggedness, which took away somewhat of their desolate character. However lofty their elevation, their ascent was gradual, extending over many miles, whereby they sloped down gently to the valleys below, and their lower sides were clothed with vegetation, which relieved their sterner aspect and softened their rugged grandeur. Not so here. The mountains of Sinai rise up abruptly from the plain, looking more like columns than pyramids; and as their substance is the hardest granite, which affords little support to vegetation, they have a bare, bald aspect, for which they are sometimes called the Alps unclothed.
Between these awful mountains, and winding round among them in countless turnings, are the wadies of which I have spoken — river beds, through which, in the time of rains and storms, there pour furious torrents, which as quickly pass away to the sea, leaving behind them only the traces of the ruin they have made. Of these wadies, one here obtains the most complete view. See how they wind and wind, turning hither and thither in endless confusion! Here then we have the complete anatomy of the Sinaitic Peninsula. One takes it in at a glance in its whole extent, from end to end, and from side to side. It is enclosed on the east and the west by the two arms of the Red Sea — the Gulfs of Suez and of Akaba. The former seemed to lie at our feet, and following it with the eye, we could almost see the city of Suez itself. The Gulf of Akaba was farther away, and was hidden from us by intervening mountains. It lies in a depression, but over it and beyond it we saw distinctly the long range of the mountains of Arabia, as across the Gulf of Suez we saw the mountains of Africa; while southward rose the great heights of Mount Catherine and Um Shommer. What a glorious vision of mountains to be embraced in one view! One such sight were enough to repay a hundred times the fatigue of our climb to the summit of Serbal:
"'Twere worth ten years of peaceful life —
One glance at that array."
And what memories did those names recall! That Gulf of Suez was the sea across which Moses led the Israelites; on the Gulf of Akaba sailed the fleets of Solomon; while turning northward the eye rested on a long line of white cliffs — the escarpment of a table-land which was the Great and Terrible Wilderness in which the Israelites wandered forty years. Thus a wonderful nature was chosen for a wonderful history. It is this mingling of the moral sublime with the sublime in nature which makes the great interest of the Peninsula of Sinai. Beyond all the stupendous altitudes of the mountains, beyond the Alpine heights and fathomless abysses, in power to stir the soul with awe, is the human history that has been enacted amid these great forms of nature. Serbal is clothed with such associations as with a garment. Long before the Exodus of the Israelites — long before Moses fed the flocks of Jethro by Mount Horeb — Serbal was an object of patriotic and superstitious veneration, the centre of a nation and the centre of a religion. Here were lighted fires to give warning to the tribes of the Peninsula, as fires were lighted on Monte Cavo near Rome, as signals to the tribes of Latium. The Peninsula then was doubtless far more populous than now, many tribes dwelling in yonder valleys, within full view of this mountain height, so that when the beacon-fire was lighted here in the darkness of night, it shone in thousands of eyes which glared fiercely at the sign of battle. Nor was it patriotism alone which fired those warriors of the desert. Serbal, as its name imports — the palm-grove of Baal[1] — was a mountain devoted to that idolatrous service; it was the highest of all the "high places" set apart for that cruel and bloody worship. Here the priests of Baal erected their altars. On the top is still a rude cairn of stones, which may have stood here from the remotest times. This may have been one of their altars, which smoked with human sacrifices. Who could believe, when standing on such a spot, amid such scenes, so grand and yet so still and peaceful, that man could thus defile the noblest works of God; how, unawed by such grandeur, he was capable of deeds that thrill us with horror — deeds of such cruelty and crime! When I reached the top, I threw myself down upon a shelf of rock, in which there was a slight indentation, a hollow such as is sometimes worn by the action of water, which seemed as if made on purpose to receive the head of a poor pilgrim. This I took for a pillow, and here, stretched at full length, gave one long, steady gaze up into the blue sky. Hard indeed was it to realize that this very rock had borne up the bloody altars of Baal, and that these tranquil heavens had heard the shrieks of human victims. The very memory of such things still brings a shadow over the scene, like the shadows of the clouds that were at that moment sailing across the heavens above us. Well was it that Moses invaded these mountains and valleys, to extirpate not indeed such a race, but such a religion. The descendants of the Baal-worshippers are here still, but their worship, like the worship of Moloch, has perished forever.
As to the question whether Serbal or Sinai were the Mount of the Law, I am not so rash as to enter into a controversy in which both explorers and interpreters differ so widely. Dean Stanley states at once the advantage of Serbal and the objection to it, when he says that it would be impossible to find a more commanding height for giving the law, were there only a plain or valley below the Mount for receiving it. This circumstance has great weight, and yet I cannot think it decisive: for it assumes what it is by no means necessary to suppose, that all the Israelites stood together in a compact mass. Certainly there is no broad plain under Serbal, like that of Er Rahah under Sinai. Rephidim is comparatively but a mountain pass, to which Dr. Post returned after we had entered Wady Feiran, to measure it with a careful eye. He found it but a mile long and a third of a mile wide — a space ample for the battle with the Amalekites, for Joshua "chose out" his men, and they might have been only a few thousands, but quite inadequate to contain the two millions of people supposed to have been present at the giving of the Law. But why must we take it for granted that all stood in one vast plain, in ranks and battalions, like an army? There are half a dozen wadies from which they might see the top of Serbal. They may have been scattered over a space many miles square, filling up the depths of the valleys and overflowing the tops of the hills. The sides of the mountains may have been black with the dense masses; and away yonder, on the shore of the Red Sea, is a sandy beach or plain, where there is space enough not only for the congregation of Israel, but we might almost say for the army of the dead if they were to rise up as at the Day of Judgment. All were within sight and hearing of the awful Mount. All might have seen the lightnings from the cloud, and heard the thunderings and "the voice of the trumpet sounding long and waxing louder and louder." So it might have been. How it was, we can perhaps judge better after we have ascended the cliffs of Sinai.
- ↑ The late Professor Palmer, who was at once master of Arabic and an indefatigable explorer in the Peninsula of Sinai, derived the name from another Arabic word, sirbal, signifying a shirt or coat-of-mail, which might have been suggested by the appearance of the mountain in a storm, when the floods descended on its dome-like head, and poured in innumerable silver streams down its rocky sides. Whether that be the true etymology of the name or not, the image it presents is very striking and beautiful.