pastures, while the huts of the inhabitants peep out at intervals from among the trees.  Valleys and plains, even in some places the slopes of the hills, are sparsely covered with those delicate aromatic herbs which affect a stony soil.  Their life is a perpetual struggle against the sun:  scorched, dried up, to all appearance dead, and so friable that they crumble to pieces in the fingers when one attempts to gather them, the spring rains annually infuse into them new life, and bestow upon them, almost before one’s eyes, a green and perfumed youth of some days’ duration.  The summits of the hills remain always naked, and no vegetation softens the ruggedness of their outlines, or the glare of their colouring.  The core of the peninsula is hewn, as it were, out of a block of granite, in which white, rose-colour, brown, or black predominate, according to the quantities of felspar, quartz, or oxides of iron which the rocks contain.  Towards the north, the masses of sandstone which join on to Gebel et-Tih assume all possible shades of red and grey, from a delicate lilac neutral tint to dark purple.  The tones of colour, although placed crudely side by side, present nothing jarring nor offensive to the eye; the sun floods all, and blends them in his light.  The Sinaitic peninsula is at intervals swept, like the desert to the east of Egypt, by terrible tempests, which denude its mountains and transform its wadys into so many ephemeral torrents.  The Monitu who frequented this region from the dawn of history did not differ much from the “Lords of the Sands;” they were of the same type, had the same costume, the same arms, the same nomadic instincts, and in districts where the soil permitted it, made similar brief efforts to cultivate it.  They worshipped a god and a goddess whom the Egyptians identified with Horus and Hathor; one of these appeared to represent the light, perhaps the sun, the other the heavens.  They had discovered at an early period in the sides of the hills rich metalliferous veins, and strata, bearing precious stones; from these they learned to extract iron, oxides of copper and manganese, and turquoises, which they exported to the Delta.  The fame of their riches, carried to the banks of the Nile, excited the cupidity of the Pharaohs; expeditions started from different points of the valley, swept down upon the peninsula, and established themselves by main force in the midst of the districts where the mines lay.  These were situated to the north-west, in the region of sandstone, between the western branch of Gebel et-Tih and the Gulf of Suez.  They were collectively called Mafkait, the country of turquoises, a fact which accounts for the application of the local epithet, lady of Mafkait, to Hathor.  The earliest district explored, that which the Egyptians first attacked, was separated from the coast by a narrow plain and a single range of hills:  the produce of the mines could be thence transported to the sea in a few hours without difficulty.  Pharaoh’s labourers called this region the district of Baifc, the mine par excellence, or of Bebit, the country of grottoes, from the numerous tunnels which their predecessors had made there:  the name Wady Maghara, Valley of the Cavern, by which the site is now designated, is simply an Arabic translation of the old Egyptian word.