going to Sinai. Sometimes we rose on an elevation, from which we took in a more extensive view, and saw mountains in the distance. These smaller hollows worn by streams, like the affluents of a river, finally merge into the Wady el Arish (which we entered in the afternoon), which is to the Desert of the Wandering what the Wady es Sheikh is among the mountains of granite and sandstone, and which bears the great name of the River of Egypt — a term which, as used in the Bible, does not designate the Nile, but this mighty wady, which keeps its course to the sea, coming out near Gaza, and forming the boundary between Egypt and Palestine.
Of course the chief interest of this desolate region is that it is none other than the Great and Terrible Wilderness, in which the Israelites passed all but three of their forty years of wandering. It has always been the tradition, that the march from Egypt to Sinai took about fifty days; and scholars reckon the time of the encampment in the region of Sinai at one year, lacking a few days; when the host of Israel moved northward, and crossing the sandy belt which we passed over yesterday, climbed into this great upland. When they entered it, they could not have intended to remain there, for Moses would not have chosen such a desolate region for a long encampment. They took it on the march to the land promised to their fathers, and advanced nearly through it, when they were driven back by the fierce tribes that inhabited the country. Thus repulsed, they withdrew and pitched their tents in the wilderness, moving from place to place, but never crossing its boundary for more than thirty-seven years, when they turned south to the head of the Gulf of Akaba, and passing round the mountains, came up through Moab, on the east side of the Dead Sea, to Nebo, where Moses died, and from which Joshua, shortly after,
