After six hours (= twenty-two knots and a half), we anchored in the deep channel, about three-quarters of a kilometre wide, that separates the Sinaitic mainland from the northern one of the only two islands known in the 'Akabah Gulf, a scrap of rock crowned with picturesque grey ruins. The Jezírat Fara'ún of the maps, the Isle of Pharaoh, concerning whom traditions are still current, it is known to the 'Akabites only as Jebel el-Kala'h or "Fort-hill:" hence El-Graa in Laborde, and Jezírat El-Q reieh in Arconati.[EN#124] Burckhardt alone mentions that the ruins are known as El-Dayr--"the Convent." This human lair is encircled by barrier-reefs of coralline, broad to the south-west and large in scattered places: eastward they form a shallow wall-like ledge, beyond which blue water at once begins. The island-formation is that of the opposite coasts, Midian and Sinai, grey granite dyked with decaying porphyritic trap, and everywhere veined with white and various-coloured quartzes. The shape is a long oval of about three hundred and twenty by one hundred and fifty-two metres; a saddleback with two stony heads, the higher to the north, rising a hundred feet or so above sea-level. Pommel and cantle are connected by a low seat, a few yards of isthmus; and the three divisions, all strongly marked, bear buildings. The profile from east and west shows four groups: to the extreme north a tower, backed by the castle donjon, on the knob of granite here and there scarped; the works upon the thread of isthmus; and the walls and bastions crowning the southern knob, which, being lower, is even more elaborately cut to a perpendicular. We landed upon the eastern side of the islet rock, where the trunk of a broken mole is covered in rear by a ruined work. Here, being most liable to attack, the fortifications are strongest; whereas on the west side only a single wall, now strewn on the ground, with square Burj at intervals, defends the little boat-harbour. The latter appears at present in the shape of a fish-pond, measuring sixty by forty metres; sunk below sea-level, fed by percolation, and exceedingly salt. To the east of this water, black cineraceous earth shows where the smith had been at work: we applied the quarrymen to sift it, without other results but bits of glass, copper, and iron nails.