hundred feet, and absolutely perpendicular. We hoped, however, to discover some less forbidding prospect, by passing around its base to the eastern or southern side. Our ascent up the ravine was facilitated by a great number of rocks and fragments of granite, which had fallen from the heights above and lodged in the channel. They formed, in several places, laborious and steep stairs. Before reaching the front, where we had hoped to find some practicable slope by which we might be able to ascend the threatening mountain that overhung us, our passage was suddenly stopped by a yawning precipice. At the bottom, which appeared to be two hundred feet below us, was a narrow vale enclosed by precipitous rocks of great height, and covered with shrubs. Some deep gorge, concealed from our view, probably extended from this to one of the valleys below. Our hopes of success on this side at least, were blasted. We found, however, on further examination, a part of the cliff where we could commence the ascent, though it appeared to become impracticable at a higher elevation. The attempt succeeded beyond my expectations. The narrow bed of a decomposed vein of porphyry offered us at first an unexpected facility. When this failed, we succeeded in pulling ourselves up the no longer perpendicular mass by means of small cavities in its surface, such as I have already described. The slope now became so gentle that we could creep along on our hands and feet, though a miss-step must have been fatal. [They soon after exulted in the accomplishment of their object.]

.

"The summit of Sooksafe, which seen from the Wady elRaha, seems but a point, spreads out into a level area of considerable extent, composed of dark gray, sunburnt granite. The view from this point is little inferior to that from Sinai [Jebel Mûsa], and embraces nearly the same region. I was most gratified to find that it perfectly commands the plain of el Raha, and that every object of suffi

cient magnitude, and every transaction upon its summit, must have been seen by the encamped Israelites. There are two other summits on this end of the mountain, rather more lofty than these, within the distance of half a mile or a little more. I ascended them, to see whether they had any claim to the honor which I had already awarded to the first. I was soon satisfied that they had not. Only a small part of the plain was visible from them."

The reader has now perhaps a pretty correct idea of this spot, so fitted to be the scene of most wonderful and sublime events. The feeling that most impresses itself upon travellers amongst these mountains, even apart from all historic associations, is solemnity. These great, distinct elevations, though often rough and jagged, are all massive, and are marked with the impressive grandeur of seeming eternal endurance and majesty. There is also such a depth of repose, as if eternal silence, on peak above or in vale below, held jealous dominion, not allowing even the whisperings of a breeze to break its continuity.

But, even at this day, that silence is sometimes broken so wonderfully and grandly that it seems as if God might even yet be there, speaking in a manner to be recognized by our ear. The mountains are so packed together in close proximity, yet with deep precipitous valleys between; there is such a vast number of them, all distinct, all solid and massive; and they are so bare and thus so fitted for reverberations, that a peal of thunder among them is the grandest of all earthly sounds.

If the reader of this has ever been at our national Military Academy amid the depths of the Highlands, when its heavy guns have been fired, he will remember well the returned roar from all the surrounding crags; and how the sound went leaping from peak to peak, and was sent back, now in a faint echo, and then again in a multitude as of great explosions, and then faintly again, and was caught up

What then must be peaks of this penin

....

and carried far off, whence it spake back in expiring murmurs or in one last echo all by itself. the effect of thunder among the naked sula of Sinai! And we must try to imagine it before we can have an idea of the scenes at the giving by Jehovah of his Law; for that, we know, was with "thunders and lightnings." A thunder storm there has been described by a traveller, Dr. Stewart; but the description, though graphic, still must fall greatly below the reality, for what description can reach the power of such an effect? He says, “Every bolt, as it burst with the roar of a cannon, seemed to awaken a series of distinct echoes on every side. . . . . They swept like a whirlwind among the higher mountains, becoming faint as some mighty peak intervened, and bursting with undiminished volume through some yawning cleft, till the very ground trembled with the concussion. It seemed as if the mountains of the whole peninsula were answering one another in a chorus of the deepest bass. Ever and anon a flash of lightning dispelled the pitchy darkness and lit up the mountain as if it had been day; then, after the interval of a few seconds, came a peal of thunder, bursting like a shell, to scatter its echoes to the four quarters of the heavens, and overpowering for a moment the loud howling of the wind."

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE DECALOGUE.

WE accompany now the vast multitudes of the Israelites,

as coming either by Wady Sheikh or by the shorter and rougher way of Nukb Hâwy ("Windy Pass"), over

1 "Tent and Khan."

the hill at the north they finally debouched out upon the plain of er-Rahah; and on it and on the gentler elevations adjoining, soon had their encampment formed. It was, indeed, a vast and most interesting, moving panorama,—this company of two or three millions of persons, with their flocks and herds; while above them rested that mysterious pillar of the cloud,-now to remain there stationary for nearly a year.

A strange mystery, indeed, there was in all things connected with this people. At night that mysterious pillar of fire was still to give its light; and through all the silent hours to the breaking of day, was to come down upon them that mysterious food of manna, the quiet token of God's constant, providing care.

But God was about to speak to them here in audible. tones. Hitherto his communications had been to Moses and Aaron; or, far back in their history, to Abraham and their other patriarchs. But there was now a vast work to be done, that of elevating a whole nation rapidly to a knowledge of him;-of educating an immense multitude into the highest science, the science of knowing and understanding God. Who was to teach? How was the teaching to be brought within the comprehension of such an ignorant, debased multitude, and to be impressed indelibly upon their minds and hearts? There were no books for the multitude; few persons that could inform them orally; and the oral, and, indeed, any other lessons, on such an obtuse and capricious people would have little permanent effect. How then teach and enlighten them, and how mould them rightly now, at the very beginning, when they could yet be moulded at all? It must be done soon. God was now going to write the lesson for them on the sky here at Sinai, and to flash it before their eyes; and his thunders were to be his voice sounding in their ears. What he had before spoken to the patriarchs, and to Moses and Aaron singly, he was

here to speak to the whole nation. They were all to be taught, and were afterward to be a demonstration of him and for him, before the world for all future history ;-God in history, a volume that the world might read.

For this he had brought them to Sinai. Therefore the cloud now rested there.

That mountain, so silent now, so rough in crag and pinnacle, and so weathered by many ages of heat and storm, has yet a majesty unrivalled on our globe; and as in our thoughts we gaze at it, the old scenes recorded of it, all so terrific when the loud thunder caught from its summit reverberated from the thousand peaks of mountains scattered far and wide, and the lightnings flashed, and supernatural sounds in the intervals of the thunder filled the air,-all seem to come before us; and we seem to hear God still speaking there amid that solemn and dread awfulness of his presence.

The encampment had been formed. Far and wide over the plain, and along the wadys opening into it, was the vast city of tents. The people were scattered about in the various occupations attendant on a new nomadic home; some were seeking in the neighborhood such spots of pasturage as it would afford; some were gazing in wonder, and with a feeling of awe, upon the bare dark heights that rose in such rugged majesty over their heads. The elders, so lately constituted into a body of judges for the people, were organizing for the great task before them;-for these millions of the suddenly aggregated and loosely cohering nation would give ample employment to such courts.

Soon after the arrival at this place, Moses was summoned by the Deity to ascend the mountain. He may, in his visits to its heights, have gone by the easier ascent along its sides, or by a way less difficult than is yet known to us, up its front.

Far up, on those solitary heights, God spoke to him. The scene was in accordance with the words. All around