Pointing north-eastwards to the majestic pile in the Shara" or Seir Mountains, the Jebel el-Yitm,[EN#129] a corruption of El-Yatim, the Shaykh told us a tale that greatly interested us. It appears, I have said, a remarkable formation from whose group of terminal domes and pinnacles the tomb of Aaron on Mount Hor is,[EN#130] they say, visible; and it is certainly the highest visible peak of the grand wall that forms the right bank of the Wady Yitm. Thus it is but one of a long range; and the Bedawin visit it, to make sacrifice, according to universal custom, at the tomb of a certain Shaykh Bákir. Here, some years ago, came an old man and a young man in a steamer (Erin) belonging to his Highness the Khediv: the former told the Arabs that in his books the height was called the Jebel el-Núr ("Mountain of Light"), a title which apparently he had first applied to the Jebel el-Lauz; and the latter climbed to the mountain-top. After that they went their way. I quite agree with my lamented friend, Dr. Beke, that it is an enormous blunder to transfer Midian, the "East Country," to the west of El-'Arabah, and to place it south of the South Country (El-Negeb, Gen. xx. I). I own that it is ridiculous to make the Lawgiver lead his fugitives into a veritable cul-de-sac, then a centre of Egyptian conquest. Evidently we have still to find the "true Mount Sinai," if at least it be not a myth, pure and simple. The profound Egyptologist, Dr. Heinrich Brugsch-Bey, observes that the vulgar official site lies to the south of and far from the line taken by the Beni Israil, and that the papyri show no route leading to it; whilst many have remarked that the Sinai of the Exodus is described as a single isolated mountain or hill, not as one projection from a range of heights.[EN#131] I would also suggest that the best proof of how empirical is the actual identification, will be found in the fact that the Jews--except only the Rev. Jos. Wolff (1821)--have never visited, nor made pilgrimages to, what ought to be one of their holiest of holy places. This crucial point has been utterly neglected by the officers of the Ordnance Survey of Sinai. It is evident that Jebel Serbal dates only from the early days of Koptic Christianity; that Jebel Musá, its Greek rival, rose after the visions of Helena in the fourth century; whilst the building of the convent by Justinian belongs to A.D. 527. Ras Sufsafah, its rival to the north, is an affair of yesterday, and may be called the invention of Robinson; and Jebel Katerina, to the south, is the property of Ruppell. Thus the oft-quoted legends of the Sinaitic Arabs are mere monkish traditions, adopted by Ishmaelitic ignorance. The great Lawgiver probably led his horde of fugitive slaves over the plains of El-Negeb and El-Tih, north of the so-called Sinaitic mountain-blocks, marching in small divisions like those of a modern Bedawi tribe; and we know from the latest surveys that the land, now alternately a fiery or