On the northern side of these granite ranges, where the table-land is 8000 feet above the sea, and along the edge of the desert of El Aklaj in Haudramaut, there is a tract of land so loose and so very fine, that a plummet was sunk in it by Baron Wrede to the depth of 360 feet without reaching the bottom. There is a tradition in the country that the Sabæan army of King Suffi perished in attempting to cross this desert. Arabia Felix, which merits its name, is the only part of that country with permanent streams, though they are small. Here also the mountains and fertile ground run far inland, producing grain, pasture, coffee, odoriferous plants, and gums. High cliffs line the shores of the Indian Ocean and the Strait of Bab-el-man-deb—“the Gate of Tears.” The fertile country is continued a considerable way along the coast of the Red Sea, but the character of barrenness is resumed by degrees, till at length the hills and intervening terraces, on which Mecca and Medina, the holy cities of the Mahomedans, stand, are sterile wastes wherever springs do not water them. The blast of the desert, loaded with burning sand, sweeps over these parched regions. Mountains skirt the table-land to the north; and the peninsula, between the Gulfs of Akabah and Suez on the Red Sea, the Eliath of Scripture, is filled by the mountain-group of Sinai and Horeb. Jebel Houra, Mount Sinai, on which Moses received the Ten Commandments, is 9000 feet high, surrounded by higher mountains, which are covered with snow in winter. The group of Sinai abounds in springs and verdure. At its northern extremity lies the desert of El-Teh, 70 miles long and 30 broad, in which the Israelites wandered forty years. It is covered with long ranges of high rocks, of most repulsive aspect, rent into deep clefts only a few feet wide, hemmed in by walls of rock sometimes 1000 feet high, like the deserted streets of a Cyclopean town. The journey from Sinai to Akabah, by the Wadee-el-Ain or Valley of the Spring, is perfectly magnificent, and the site of Petra itself is a tremendous confusion of black and brown mountains. It is a considerable basin closed in by rocks, with chasms and defiles in the precipices. The main street is 2 miles long, and not more than from 10 to 30 feet wide, enclosed between perpendicular rocks from 100 to 700 feet high, which so nearly meet as to leave only a strip of sky. A stream runs through the street which must once have been a considerable torrent, and the precipitous rocks are excavated into thousands of caverns once inhabited—into conduits, cisterns, flights of steps, theatres, and temples, forming altogether one of the most wonderful remains of antiquity. The whole of Arabia Petrea, Edom of the sacred writers, presents a scene of appalling desolation, completely fulfilling the denunciation of prophecy.[35]