. Palestine : the physical geography and natural history of the Holy Land. r, which we do not know that any tra-veller but Burckhardt has hitherto visited; and he did not mount the highest summit, whichseemed to him impossible to reach, the sides being almost perpendicular, and the rock sosmooth as to afford no hold for the feet. He halted 200 feet below the top, and there abeautiful view opened upon the Gulf of Suez, and the neighbourhood of Tor, which place wasdistinctly visible, while the wide plain of El Kaa lay extended at his feet. This mountainconsists of granite, the lower part of whic
. Palestine : the physical geography and natural history of the Holy Land. r, which we do not know that any tra-veller but Burckhardt has hitherto visited; and he did not mount the highest summit, whichseemed to him impossible to reach, the sides being almost perpendicular, and the rock sosmooth as to afford no hold for the feet. He halted 200 feet below the top, and there abeautiful view opened upon the Gulf of Suez, and the neighbourhood of Tor, which place wasdistinctly visible, while the wide plain of El Kaa lay extended at his feet. This mountainconsists of granite, the lower part of which is red, while the top is almost white, so as toappear from a distance like chalk; this arises from the large proportion of white feldspath init, and the smallness of the particles of hornblende and mica. In the middle of the mountain,between the granite rocks, are broad strata of brittle, black slate, mixed with layers of cpiartzand feldspath, and with micaceous schistus. The quartz includes thin strata of mica, of the h 2 lii PHYSICAL HISTORY OF PALESTINE. [Chap. ^=-5^P» [Mount Serbal.] most brilliant white colour, which is quite dazzling in the sun, and forms a striking contrastwith the blackened surface of the white and red granite. The mountain of Serbal seems to the author of this work of peculiar interest, from the con-siderations which in another place a led him to conjecture that this, and not the so-called JebelMousa, is the mount on which the law was delivered to Moses. The present merely descrip-tive account does not require us to re-state the arguments on which this conclusion wasfounded, or to add those further considerations which we may adduce in a subsequent is sufficient now to remind or apprise the reader that this is the view which we have taken,and which we have more lately seen no occasion to modify. The French commissioners seem to be the only persons who mention this mountain byname, prior to Burckhardt, and he is still the only traveller
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