The most fertile part of Wadi Firân is enclosed between two hills, which rise from the middle of the level in the valley; of these, the upper one is called El Buêb, the lower one at the end of the Wadi Aleyât, Meharret or Hererât. In olden times, it appears that this valley must have been enclosed, and the rushing water which flowed from all sides, even from Gebel Mûsa, into this hollow, uniting, must have formed a lake. Such a supposition alone appears to account for the extraordinary deposit of earth, which here to a height of from eighty to a hundred feet, lies along the valley walls; and it is, without doubt, this singular situation of Firân, as the lowest point of a large mountainous tract, which causes the uncommon wealth of waters which is now met with. Immediately behind the convent hill, we found the narrow valley bed as stony and barren as the higher valleys, although the stream flowed on for another half-hour by our side. The powerful rush of the water here admitted no more earthy deposit. Not till the next large turning of the valley, called El Héssue, did we see any palms. Here the stream disappeared in a cleft in the rock, and the more suddenly, as it had broken out behind the Buêb, and we saw no more of it. After five hours’ journey, we left the valley of Firân, which here turns to the left towards the sea, and we went out of the mountains into a flat sandstone country. The high mountains turned next back towards the north, and enclosed in a great bow the hilly, sandy landscape which we crossed. We came to the Wadi Mokatteb, the “written valley,” which takes its name from the inscriptions which are found here in many places. It is easily seen that it is those rocks, shaded from the noonday sun, which invited the travellers passing to Firân to engrave their names and short maxims upon the soft stone. We took impressions in paper of all the inscriptions that we could reach, or copied with the pen such as were not suited for impression. We found these inscriptions singly, at the most various, and often very far distant places in the peninsula; and, on the whole, had no doubt that they had been engraven by the inhabitants of the land in the first centuries before and after Christ. Occasionally I found them graven over older Greek names, and Christian crosses are not unfrequently combined in them. These inscriptions are usually called Sinaitic, and not unaptly, if the whole of the peninsula of Sinai is so meant as the place where they are found. But it is worthy of remark that at Gebel Mûsa, which is generally considered to be Mount Sinai, there are but a few single and short inscriptions of this kind, in the same manner, as by a careful survey they might be found in any of these places; but their actual centre was rather Pharan, at the foot of Serbâl.[110]