=Probable Route of the Hebrews.= Of the two or three sites mentioned in the biblical narrative, Elim, with its twelve springs of water and seventy palm-trees, is probably the fertile spot at the end of the northeastern arm of the Red Sea known in later biblical times as the port of Elath. A journey of two hundred miles along the main caravan route from Egypt would bring the Hebrews to this point after three weeks comfortable travel. From there the highways branch northward toward Canaan. If Sinai was their first objective point, the earliest biblical references to this mountain indicate that from Elim they probably turned to the northeast and followed the way of the Arabah until they reached that one of the many peaks in the southwestern part of the Mount Seir range which was regarded by their Midianite kinsmen as the special abode of Jehovah. Here Moses' Midianite father-in-law visited the Israelites. Here, in keeping with an ancient custom of the desert, a sacred covenant was made with their God, which became the basis of their later social and religious life. =Kadesh-barnea.= Late Jewish (_cf._ Jos. _Ant._ IV, 4:7) and modern Moslem traditions make the picturesque Wady Mûsa, in the heart of which was the marvellous Edomite capital, Petra, the scene of their desert sojourn; but the older biblical narratives indicate that from Sinai the Hebrews turned to the northwest. A desert journey of sixty or seventy-five miles would bring them into the midst of the series of bold, rugged mountains, cut in every direction by dry wadies, known to-day as the Jebel el-Magrah, in the southwestern part of the South Country. In one of these wadies was the famous spring of Kadesh-barnea, still known as Ain Kdês, the Holy Spring. The water gushes out through several openings from the side of a steep limestone cliff and is caught in a series of artificially constructed basins. The stream which arises from this spring, as it runs down the valley, converts it into what seems in contrast to its barren surroundings a little oasis. As in the case of most desert streams, the waters soon disappear, however, beneath the desert sand. Here, in the heart of the wilderness, and yet only a few miles east of the point where the highway that ran from Elath to Beersheba was joined by another which came across the desert from Egypt, the Israelites apparently established their central camp.