Since that time the comprehensive and masterly work of my honoured friend Carl Ritter: _Vergleichende Erdkunde der Sinai-Halbinsel, von Palästina und Syrien, erster Band_, Berlin, 1848--(Comparative Geology of the peninsula of Sinai, of Palestine, and Syria, volume one),--has appeared. The exhausting use and employ of all sources from the oldest down to the most recent, for an as grandly conceived, as circumstantially executed, general picture of the peninsula in its geographical relations and in the relative history of its population, has also not left the question under discussion, in which history and geography are in closer connection than in any other, unillustrated. Sinai is for the peninsula what Jerusalem is to Palestine, and it is ascertained that the building of the church at Gebel Mûsa, in the sixth century, brought about by the belief that it was founded at the place where the Law was given, caused the historical centre of the peninsula,--which formerly was undoubtedly identical with the city of Pharan and its palm-forest, as the natural geographical centre,--to be parted from it, and removed several days’ journey further south; just as certain must the determination of the question, whether a _first_ or _second_ parting of the historical and geographical centre could be of considerable influence in the exposition of the earliest history of the peninsula, and could even exercise some influence on the future tone, not only of Sinaitic literature, but even on some of the relations of the place itself which not unfrequently subject, to some extent, the destinations of the continually increasing number of travellers. Ritter’s work, of course, had at once to choose one of the two opinions. And, naturally, after the final examination of the considerable previous works, the new opinion which first stepped forth against the view undoubted for a thousand years, and accepted by all the later travellers, in an incidental form, in a necessarily imperfect report of a journey, could make the less demand for preference, as it was not critically examined in any way, nor taken into consideration by later travellers. I know how to value the equally careful as impartial recognizing examination which Ritter has given in his work to the grounds in favour of Serbâl being Sinai.