About midnight on February 2nd, the tempestuous northerly gale, which had now lasted four days and five nights, ceased almost suddenly: the signs of the approaching calm were the falling of the mercury, the increased warmth of the atmosphere, and the shifting of the wind towards the east. All hailed the change with joy. The travellers looked forward to ending their peregrinations, while the voyagers, myself included, hoped safely to steam round the Gulf el-'Akabah, and to trace, as correctly as possible, the extent, the trend, and the puissance of the quartz-formations. At Cairo Mr. Consul Rogers told me he had found them in large quantities veining the red grits of Petra; and I thought it possible that the "white stone" may extend under the waters of 'Akabah into the peninsula of Sinai. Chapter VII. Cruise from Maknáto El-'Akabah. This "Red Sea in the Land of Edom" (1 Kings ix. 26) is still, as Wellsted entitles it, "a vast and solitary Gulf." It bears a quaint resemblance to that eastern fork of the northern Adriatic, the Quarnero, whose name expresses its terrible storms; while the Suez branch shows the longer stretch of the Triestine bifurcation. Yamm Elath or Eloth, as the Hebrews called El-'Akabah, has, by the upheaval of the land, lost more of its fair proportions than its western sister. It was at one time the embouchure of the Jordan, extending up the Wady el-'Arabah to the Asphaltite Lake (Dead Sea), before the former became, so to speak, a hill and the latter a hole. This view dates from olden times. "Si suppone," says Cornelius à Lapide,[EN#119] "che sia un sollevamento che accadde, mentre un abbassamento formava il Mar Morto; e che il Giordano si gettasse nel Golfo Elanitico (Yamm Ailath), ciò é nel Mar Rosso, prima della destruzione di Sodoma." For the latter date we have only to read, "When a movement of depression sank the lower Jordan Valley, and its present reservoirs, the Tiberias Lake and the Dead Sea, to their actual level." There is nothing marvellous nor unique in the feature, as it appears to those suffering from that strange malady, "Holy Land on the Brain." The Oxus and the Caspian show an identical formation, only the sinking has been on a smaller scale.