On the following day we went on farther, and reached, through the Wadi Selâf and the lower end of the Wadi e’Shech, the Wadi Firân, this most precious jewel of the peninsula, with its palms and tarfa woods, by the side of a lovely bubbling stream, which flows on, winding through bushes and flowers, as far as the old convent-mountains of the city of Pharan, the present Firân. Everything that we had seen, till then, and that we afterwards saw on our way, was a naked stony desert, in comparison with this fruitful well-wooded and well-watered oasis. For the first time since we left the valley of the Nile, did we tread again on the soft black earth, obliged to put out of our way the overhanging bushy branches with our arms, and did we hear the singing birds twittering in the foliage. There where the broad Wadi Aleyât descends from Serbâl into the Wadi Firân, and widens the valley into a wide level, rises the rocky hill Hererât, on the top of which lie the ruins of an old convent. At the foot of this hill stood once a stately church, built of well-hewn sand-stone blocks, the remains of which have been used in building the city lying on the opposite slope. I went the same evening up the Wadi Aleyât, and passed innumerable rock inscriptions, till I came to a spring surrounded by palms and _nebek_, from whence I enjoyed the full view of the majestic mountain chain. Distinguished from all the other mountains, and united in one mass, rises the Serbâl, first in a gentle slope, and then in steep rugged precipices, to a height of 6,000 feet above the sea. Incomparable was the view, when the valleys and lower mountains around were already wrapped in the shades of night, and the summit of the mountain, still above the colourless grey, rose like a fiery cloud, glowing in the setting sun. The next morning I repeated my visit to Wadi Aleyât, and finished the plan of this remarkable district, the land points of which I had already laid out from the top of the Serbâl.