The formation of this part of Sinai, as far as we can see from the shore, reflects, in wilder forms and more abrupt lines, the opposite coast of Midian: there is, however, the important difference that the Secondaries and the quartz-veins, there so important, are here wanting. The skeletons of mountain and hill appear as if prolonged under water. The ruddy syenite is dyked and veined by the familiar network of green-black porphyritic trap; the filons are disposed in parallels striking north-south, with a little easting; the dip is westerly (about 35 degrees mag.), and the thickness extends to hundreds of feet, often forming a foundation for the upper cliff. The subaerial parts are the same warty and pimply growth which appears on the other side. Nothing could be more wearisome to the Alpine climber than such a country: he would scale the peaks and ridges for fifty feet, to descend thirty on the other side; and the frequent Wadys, ankle-deep in loose sand, generally end in steep stony couloirs. The watercourses, whose broad mouths are scattered with thin green, contain pebbles and rolled quartzes, including fine specimens of the crystallized variety.
We landed, after an hour's row in the gig, at the central or main line of palms; and on the banks of Wady Dahab, here a full mile wide, we found the works of man, like those of Nature, a copy of Makná. The date trees and clumps are hedge-closed; two scatters of 'Ushash (tabernacles) show round towers of rough stone, broken and patched with palm-frond; and, further north of the Golden Valley, a few old Arab graves have been weathered into mere heaps of large stones. These are the Kubur el-Nasárá ("Nazarene's Graves") of Burckhardt,[122] a name apparently forgotten by the present generation. We vainly sought and asked after ruins: of old, however, "Dí'zahab" might have served to disembark cargo which, by taking the land-route northwards, as the Christian pilgrims still do from El-Nuwaybi', would avoid the dangerous headwaters of El-'Akabah. Nor could we believe with Pococke[123] that the place derived its name from the mica shining like gold; his theory is stultified by the fact that mica is by no means a prominent feature, even had the Ancients been so ignorant as to be deceived by it.
The people were by no means communicative. An elderly man, with a red turban and sword by side, hurried away from us when we addressed him, leaving his middle-aged wife to follow with a babe on shoulder and a boy in hand: she also refused to speak, waving her hand by way of reply to every question. At last a semi-civilized being, acquainted with the Convent of St. Catherine, Selím bin Husayn, of the Muzaynah tribe, satisfied our curiosity in view of tobacco, and offered a rudely stuffed ibex-head for a shilling. In the evening our fishermen visited the reef, which supplied admirable rock-cod, a bream (?) called Sultan el-Bahr, and Marján (a Sciæna); but they neglected the fine Sirinjah ("sponges"), which here grow two feet long. The night was dark and painfully still, showing nought but the youngest of moons, and the gloomiest silhouettes of spectral mountains.
We set out at seven a.m. on the next day, when an Azyab or south-easterly wind was promised by the damp air, the slaty sea, and the gloomy nimbi on the hill-tops. A small party landed after two hours' steaming, in search of quartz, which proved to be chloritic sandstones and limestones. In the broad valley they found a few Muzayni families, with their camels, sheep, and goats. These unfortunates had no tents, sleeping under the trees; they were desperate beggars, and, although half-starved, they asked a napoleon for a kid, declaring that such was its price at the quarantine station of Tor. Here the errors of the Hydrographic Chart, which have been copied literally by the latest and best popular books such as Professor Palmer's "Desert of the Exodus," began to excite our astonishment. For instance, Ras Kusayr ("the Short One") becomes Ras Arser—what a name for a headland! A good survey will presently become a sine quâ non. Unfortunately Ahmed Kaptán was suffering so much that I could not ask him to make solar observations; while the rest of us had other matters in hand. It was a great disappointment, where so much useful work remains to be done.
Hereabouts the sterile horrors of the hideous Sinaitic shore seem to reach their climax. The mountains become huge rubbish-heaps, without even colour to clothe their indecently nude forms; and each strives with its neighbour for the prize of repulsiveness. The valleys are mere dust-shunts that shoot out their rubbish, stones, gravel, and sand, in a solid flow, like discharges of lava. And, as Jebel Mazhafah, on the opposite coast, is the apex of the visible eastern Gháts, so beyond this point the Sinaitic sea-chain of mountains begins to decline into mere hills, while longer sand-points project seawards. Such is the near, the real aspect of what, viewed from Makná, appears a scene in fairy-land, decked and dight in heavenly hues of blue and purple and rosy light—
"Where the bald blear skull of the Desert
With golden mountains is crowned."
The first sign of a change of formation appeared near the "Lower (southern) Nuwaybi'" ("the Little Spring"), which the chart calls "Wasit." Here the shore shows blots of dead-white and mauve-red, in which our engineer at once detected quartz. Seeing it prolonged in straight horizontal lines, and the red overlying the white, I suspected kaolin and the normal Tauá (coloured clays): my conjecture was confirmed on the next day. Hereabouts, Wellsted (ii. 151) also remarked the colouring of the hills, which resemble those of "Sherm;" some of a deep-blue tinge, and others streaked with a brilliant red and violet. We then doubled a long sandspit running out to sea eastward, and forming, on the north, a deep bay well protected from the souther; whilst several lines of reef and shallow to the north defend it from the angry Bora. This anchorage is known to the pilots as "Wásit;" and it occupies the southern half of the bay, the northern half and its palm-groves being called the "Upper Nuwaybi'." About "Wásit" the date-palms are scattered, and the large sand-drifts ever threaten to bury them alive. Behind it yawns the great gash, "Wady Watír," which shows its grand lines even from the opposite side of the gulf: this is the route by which Christian pilgrims from Syria make the Sinai monastery, rounding on camels the northern end of El-'Akabah. The main valley receives from the north the Wady el-'Ayn, which can be reached in half a day. From the south, distant one whole march, comes the Wady el-Hazrah. This is doubtless the Hazeroth of the Exodus, meaning the fenced enclosures of a pastoral people; and a modern traveller figures and describes it as "the most beautiful and romantic landscape in the Desert." At least, so said the lately shipped guide, Mabru'k ibn Sulayyim el-Muzayni.
After a run of six hours and thirty minutes (= thirty miles), we cast anchor off Wásit: there was nothing to see ashore, save some wretched Muzaynah, two males and three females, helpmates meet for them, living like savages on fish and shell-molluscs; drinking brackish water, and sleeping in the "bush," rather than take the trouble to repair the huts. They have no sheep, but a few camels; and, by way of boats, they use catamarans composed of two palm-trunks: their home-made hooks resemble the schoolboy's crooked pin. Yet these starvelings would not fetch specimens of the white stuff, distant, perhaps, two direct miles of cross-cut, seen near Nuwaybi', and still visible. They also refused, without preliminary "bakhshísh," to show or even to tell where certain ruins, concerning which they spoke or romanced, are found in their hills. And yet there are theologians who would raise Poverty, the most demoralizing of all conditions, to the rank of an "ecclesiastical virtue."
At 6 30 a.m. on the next day, the Mukhbir stood eastwards to avoid the northern reef. Presently we passed the "Upper Nuwaybi'," a creeklet to the north-west of Wásit, with a straggling line of palms fed by the huge Wady Muzayríj. From this point to the 'Akabah head all the coast is clean of man. The Jibál el-Samghi now become the Sinaitic Jibál el-Shafah ("Lip Mountains"), the latter stretching northwards to the Hajj-road, and forming the western wall of the 'Arabah valley, whose name they assume (Jibál el-'Arabah). The scene abruptly shifts. A mottle of clouds sheds moving shadows over the hill-crests, and relieves them from the appalling monotony of yesterday. Brilliant rainbow hues, red, green, mauve, purple, yellow and white clays, gleam in the lowlands, and form dwarf bluffs; while inland, peering above the granites, the syenites, and the porphyries of the coast, pale quoins and naked cones again show the familiar Secondary formation of Midianitish Makná. We were not surprised to hear that sulphur had been found in the gypsum of these eastern Gháts of Sinai, when a Jebel el-Kibí't, approached by the Wady Suwayr, was pointed out to us. The natural deduction is that the brimstone formation is, like the turquoise, the copper, and the manganese, a continuation of the beds that gave a name to Mafka-land; while the metalliferous strata round, in horseshoe-form, the head of El-'Akabah, and run down the Arabian shore, till they become parallel with those subtending the seaboard of Africa.
The view of the eastern or Midianite coast was even more varied and suggestive. Far inland, and tinged light-blue by distance, rose the sharp, jagged, and sawlike crests of El-Sharaf, under which the Hajj-caravan wends its weary way, thus escaping the mountains which dip perpendicularly into the sea. Then come the broad and sandy slopes, here and there streaked with dark ridges, spanned by the Sultáni or Sultan's high-road, and stretching from the Gulf to the inner heights. The latter are no longer a double parallel chain: they bend from south-south-east to north-north-west, and become the Jibál el-Shará', anciently "Mount Seir;" in fact, the eastern retaining-wall of the great Wady 'Arabah. Evidently they are primary, but a white and purple patch, visible from afar, suggested a Secondary remnant. Several of the peaks, especially the blue block El-Yitm, appeared to be of great height; we all remarked its towering stature and trifid headpiece, apparently upwards of five thousand feet high, before we had heard the tale attached to it. Abreast of us and on the shore, lie the large inlet and little islet El-Humayzah: the surveyors have abominably corrupted it to "Omeider." North of it a palm grove, lining the mouth of a broad Wady which snakes high up among the sands and stones, denotes the Hajj-station, El-Hakl (Hagul), backed by tall arenaceous buttresses.