Wishing To
Ascertain The Truth, I Prepared To Visit The Mountain Of Om Shomar.
As I had lost much of the confidence of the Bedouins by writing upon the
mountains, and could not
Intimidate them by shewing a passport from the
Pasha, I kept my intended journey secret, and concerting matters with
Hamd and two Djebalye, I was let down from the window of the convent a
little before midnight on the 23rd of May, and found my guides well
armed and in readiness below. We proceeded by Wady Sebaye, the same road
I had come from Sherm. In this Wady, tradition says, the Israelites
gained the victory over the Amalekites, which was obtained by the
holding up of the hands of Moses (Ex. xvii. 12.), but this battle was
fought in Raphidim, where the water gushed out from the rock, a
situation which appears to have been to the westward of the convent, on
the approach from the gulf of Suez.
I was much disappointed at being able to trace so very few of the
ancient Hebrew names of the Old Testament in the modern names of the
peninsula; but it is evident that, with the exception of Sinai and a few
others, they are all of Arabic derivation.
On a descent from the summit of Wady Sebaye, at an hour and a half from
the convent, we turned to the right from the road to Sherm, and entered
Wady Owasz [Arabic], in a direction
WADY RAHABA
[p.588] S. b. W. I found here a small chain of white and red sand-stone
hills in the midst of granite. The morning was so very cold that we were
obliged to stop and light a fire, round which we sat till sunrise; my
feet and hands were absolutely benumbed, for neither gloves or stockings
are in fashion among Bedouins. We continued in the valley, crossing
several hills, till at four hours and a half we reached Wady Rahaba
[Arabic], in the lower parts of which we had passed a very rainy night
on the 17th. Rahaba is one of the principal valleys on this side of the
peninsula; it is broad, and affords good pasturage. We halted under a
granite rock in the middle of it, close by about a dozen small
buildings, which are called by the Bedouins Makhsen (magazines), and
which serve them as a place of deposit for their provision, clothes,
money, &c. As Bedouins are continually moving about, they find it
inconvenient to carry with them what they do not constantly want; they
therefore leave whatever they have not immediate need of in these
magazines, to which they repair as occasion requires. Almost every
Bedouin in easy circumstances has one of them; I have met with them in
several parts of the mountains, always in clusters of ten or twenty
together. They are at most ten feet high, generally about ten or twelve
feet square, constructed with loose stones, covered with the trunks of
date trees, and closed with a wooden door and lock.
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