DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12664#0290
THE TOP OF SINAI.
275
bria; upon the top of Vesuvius, and looked down
upon the waves of lava, and the ruined and half-
recovered cities at its foot; but they are noth-
ing compared with the terrific solitudes and bleak
majesty of Sinai. An observing traveller has well
called it " a perfect sea of desolation." Not a tree,
or shrub, or blade of grass is to be seen upon the
bare and rugged sides of innumerable mountains,
heaving their naked summits to the skies, while the
crumbling masses of granite all around, and the
distant view of the Syrian desert, with its bound-
less waste of sands, form the wildest and most
dreary, the most terrific and desolate picture that
imagination can conceive.
The level surface of the very top, or pinnacle, is
about sixty feet square. At one end is a single
rock about twenty feet high, on which, as said the
monk, the spirit of God descended, while in the
crevice beneath his favoured servant received the
tables of the law. There, on the same spot where
they were given, I opened the sacred book in which
those laws are recorded, and read them with a
deeper feeling of devotion, as if I were standing
nearer and receiving them more directly from the
Deity himself.
The ruins of a church and convent are still to
be seen upon the mountain, to which, before the
convent below was built, monks and hermits used
to retire, and, secluded from the world, sing the
praises of God upon his chosen hill. Near this,
also in ruins, stands a Mohammedan mosque ; for
275
bria; upon the top of Vesuvius, and looked down
upon the waves of lava, and the ruined and half-
recovered cities at its foot; but they are noth-
ing compared with the terrific solitudes and bleak
majesty of Sinai. An observing traveller has well
called it " a perfect sea of desolation." Not a tree,
or shrub, or blade of grass is to be seen upon the
bare and rugged sides of innumerable mountains,
heaving their naked summits to the skies, while the
crumbling masses of granite all around, and the
distant view of the Syrian desert, with its bound-
less waste of sands, form the wildest and most
dreary, the most terrific and desolate picture that
imagination can conceive.
The level surface of the very top, or pinnacle, is
about sixty feet square. At one end is a single
rock about twenty feet high, on which, as said the
monk, the spirit of God descended, while in the
crevice beneath his favoured servant received the
tables of the law. There, on the same spot where
they were given, I opened the sacred book in which
those laws are recorded, and read them with a
deeper feeling of devotion, as if I were standing
nearer and receiving them more directly from the
Deity himself.
The ruins of a church and convent are still to
be seen upon the mountain, to which, before the
convent below was built, monks and hermits used
to retire, and, secluded from the world, sing the
praises of God upon his chosen hill. Near this,
also in ruins, stands a Mohammedan mosque ; for