Mr Holland’s record of the Sinai Survey Expedition is printed at the end of the volume on the “Recovery of Jerusalem,” published by the Palestine Exploration Fund. Mr Holland endeavours to trace the route of the Israelites, to fix the stations, to identify the spot where the battle of Rephidim was fought, and to make more intelligible the entire story. Traditions of the passage of the children of Israel through the country are common enough, he says. The physical conditions of the country are such as to render it quite possible that the events recorded in the Book of Exodus occurred there. The route of the Israelites has not indeed been laid down with absolute certainty, but much light has undoubtedly been thrown upon it by the explorations that have been made. Mr Holland concludes by declaring that “not a single member of the expedition returned home without feeling more firmly convinced than ever of the truth of that sacred history which he found illustrated and confirmed by the natural features of the desert. The mountains and valleys, the very rocks, barren and sun-scorched as they now are, seem to furnish evidences, which none who behold them can gainsay, that this was that ‘great and terrible wilderness’ through which Moses, under God’s direction, led His people.” [_Authorities and Sources_:--“Explorations in the Peninsula of Sinai.” By Rev. F. W. Holland (in volume on the “Recovery of Jerusalem”). “Sinai.” By Major H. S. Palmer. “The Desert of the Exodus.” By Professor E. H. Palmer. “The Desert of the Tih.” By Prof. E. H. Palmer (in the volume of Special Papers, P. E. Fund.)] [Nothing is said in this section about the Sinaitic Inscriptions, because it has long ago been settled by scholars that they are Nabathean pilgrim texts of the third and fourth centuries, A.D., written by travellers who were then visiting the Sinai convent and the hermitage of Wâdy Feirân, and the traders who passed from Petra on the way to Egypt. They were first read by Beer in 1840, and the authoritative work upon them is that of Levy in 1860. In 1868-9, Prof. E. H. Palmer confirmed their results. For further references see Major Conder in _Quarterly Statement_, Jan. 1892.] CHAPTER II. PALESTINE. 1. _Palestine generally._ It will be a useful preliminary to our study of Palestine if we give here a short list of the expeditions sent out by the Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.