This he does at pp. 736 seq. Here he at once rebuts the opinion, that the tradition of the convent on Gebel Mûsa, only known to us since the sixth century, can decide anything; “the tradition of the still more ancient convent of Serbâl, and the Serbâl-city of Wadi Firân, it might be said, was just as much existing, and has only been lost, as far as we are concerned.” Therefore, other grounds taken from nature and history ought to vouch for it. Then he brings up the opinion of Robinson, who places Raphidîm in the upper part of the Wadi e’ Sheikh, but forcibly instances against it, that it would then have been visited and mentioned on the continuation of the journey, and in another place just as appositely, that one cannot, in that case, understand how the people could have grumbled about water, only one day’s journey beyond the well-watered Firân, while this is easily explained on the long way from Elim to the vicinity of Firân. Ritter therefore takes, with me and the old tradition, the curious brook of Firân to be the fountain of Moses. He only objects that, if Moses struck the fountain from out of the rocks, it must have been at the beginning, not at the end of the present rivulet, and he therefore places Raphidîm in the uppermost part of the Wadi Firân, the fertility of which could not have existed before the fountain was made. As to the situation of the Mount of the Law, he declines at present to pledge himself to any distinct decision. “We see,” he says, “already in the almost contemporaneous historians, Jerome (Procopius?) and Cosmas, the variation of opinion concerning these localities, _of which no one appears definitely settled before another, even in the latest double views by according and sufficient grounds, to us at least_. As both these modes of explanation of a text so obscure in topographical matters, as a but imperfectly known locality, can only use _hypothetical probabilities_, as briefly for a more certain explanation; so let it be permitted to state _our hypothetical view_ on this probably never-to-be quite settled matter.”