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The monks of Mount Sinai suffered much during these reigns of weakness from the marauding attacks of the Arabs. These men had no strong monastery; but hundreds of them lived apart in single cells in the side of the mountains round the valley of Feiran, at the foot of Mount Serbal, and they had nothing to protect them but their poverty.
They were not protected by Egypt, and they made treaties with the neighbouring Arabs, like an independent republic, of which the town of Feiran was the capital. The Arabs, from the Jordan to the Red Sea, made robbery the employment of their lives, and they added much to the voluntary sufferings of the monks.
We entered, in the morning, Wady Feiran, followed it down towards the sea, and then continued along shore for the rest of the day, till we reached the neighbourhood of the well called El Merkha, in front of the bay which bears the name of Birket Faraoun. June 19th.
In many of the wadis, and particularly in the gorges between Wadi Feiran and Wadi Esh Sheikh, there are water-worn banks showing that, at no very remote period, the winter floods must have risen fifty feet in channels where the growth of acacias and tamarisks and the testimony of the Arabs concur to prove that they have not risen six feet within the memory or tradition of the present inhabitants.
By the Author of "Walks about Jerusalem," "Forty Days In the Desert," "The Nile Boat," &c. Trice 16s. cloth gilt. In a handsome super-royal 8vo. volume, price 16s. cloth gilt, Illustrated by 35 Steel Engravings, Two Maps, and numerous Cuts. Being a Narrative of a Journey from Cairo, by Wady Feiran, to Mount Sinai, and Petra.
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