At the end of three days the Israelites reached the fountain Marah, but the waters were bitter, and could not be drunk. The stock which they had brought with them being now exhausted, they began to utter murmurings on finding themselves disappointed at Marah. Moses appealed to God, who directed him to a tree, which, being thrown into the waters, sweeten- ed them. The people were satisfied and admonished. The present ^Ain el-IIawdra has been thought by most travellers since Burckhardt's time to be Marah. The basin is six or eight feet in diameter, and the water Robinson found about two feet deep. Its taste is vm- pleasant, saltish, and somewhat bitter. The Arabs pronounce it Ijitter, and consider it as the worst water in all these regions. Near the spring are numerous bushes of the shrub ghurlcud — a low, bushy, thorny shrub, producing a small fruit, which ripens in June, not unlike the blackberrj', very juicy, and slightly acidulous. It delights in a saline soil, and is found growing near the brackish fountains in and around Palestine, affording a grateful refreshment to travel- lers. By means of the berries, or, if they were not ripe, the leaves of this plant, the bitterness may have been removed from the waters of Marah. Not im- probabh' the miracle in the case lay in this, that Je- hovah directed Moses to use the tree (bush) itself, in- stead of what was usual, the beiTies, as from the time of year, shortl}' after Easter, they could hardlv have been ripe. Between Ain Howarah and Ayun Musa the plain is alternately gravell}^ stony, and sandy, while under the range of Jebel Wardan (a branch of et-Tih) chalk and flints are found. There is no water on the direct line of route (Robinson, i, 127-144). Hawara stands in the lime and gypsum region which lines the eastern shore of the Gulf of Suez at its north- ern extremity. Seetzen (Reisen, iii, 117) describes the water as salt, with purgative qualities ; but adds that his Bedouins and their camels drank of it. He argues, from its inconsiderable size, that it could not be the Marah of Moses. This, however, seems an inconclu' sive reason. It would not be too near the point of
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landing assumed, as above, as Dr. Stewart argues (p. 55), when wo consider the encumbrances which would delay the host, and, especially while they were new to the desert, prevent rapid marches. But the whole region appears to abound in brackish or bitter springs (Seetzen, ib. iii, 117, etc.; Anmerk. p. 430). For in- stance, about If hours nearer Suez than the wady Ghurundel (which Lepsius took for Marah, but which Niebuhr and Kobinson regard as more probably Elim), Seetzen (ib. iii, 113, 114) found a wady Tal, with a salt spring and a salt crust on the surface of its bed, the same, he thinks, as the spot where Niebuhr speaks of finding rock-salt. This corresponds in general prox- imity with Marah. The neighboring region is de- scribed as a low plain girt with limestone hills, or more rarely chalk. On this first section of their desert march. Dr. Stanley (Sinai and Pakst. p. 37) remarks, "There can be no dispute as to the general track of the Israelites after the passage (of the Ked Sea). If they were to enter the mountains at all, thej' must continue in the route of all travellers, between the sea and the table-land of the Tih, till they entered the low hills of Ghurijndel." He adds in a note, " Dr. Graul, however, was told ... of a spring near Tih el-Amara, right (i. e. south) of Hawara, so bitter that neither men nor camels could drink of it. From hence the road goes straight to wady Ghurundel." Seetzen also inclines to view favorably the identification of el- Amara with Marah. He gives it the title of a " wady," and precisely on this ground rejects the pretensions of el-Hawira as being no " wad}'," but only a brook ; whereas, from the statement " they encamped" at Ma- rah, Marah must, he argues, have been a wady. See Maeaii.
2. The next station mentioned in Scripture is Elim, where were twelve wells of water, and threescore and ten palm-trees. As is customary with travellers in these regions, "they encamped there by the waters" (Exod. xvi, 1). The indications given in the Bible are not numerous nor verj- distinct. Neither time nor distance is accurately laid down. Hence we can expect only general accuracy in our maps, and but partial success in fixing localities. Elim, however, is generally admitted to be wady Ghurundel, lying about half a day's journey south-east from IMarah. The waj^ from Egypt to Sinai lies through this vallej', and, on account of its water and verdure, it is a chief caravan station at the present daj". It seems certain, at all events, that wady Ghurundel — whether it be Marah, as Lepsius and (although doubtfully) Seetzen thought, or Elim, as Niebuhr, Kobinson, and Kruse — must have been on the line of march, and almost equally certain that it furnished a camping station. In this wady Seetzen found more trees, shrubs, and bushes than he anywhere else saw in his journey from Sinai to Suez. He particularizes several date-palms and manj' tama- risks, and notes that the largest quantity of the vege- table manna, now to be found anj-where in the Penin- sula, is gathered here (iii, 11 G) from the leaves of the last-named tree, which here grows "with gnarled boughs and hoarj' head ; the wild acacia, tangled by its desert growth into a thicket, also shoots out its gray foliage and white blossoms over the desert" (Stanley, Sinni and Palest, p. G8). The " scenery" in this region becomes "a succession of water-courses" (*6.) ; and the wady Taiyibeh, connected with Ghiirun- del by Useit, is so named from the goodlj^ water and vegetation which it contains. These three wadys en- compass on three sides the Jebel Hummam; the sea, which it precipitously overhangs, being ou the fourth. They arc the principal ones of those which the Israel- ites, going from north-west to south-east along the coast, would come upon in the following order — wady Ghiirundel, wady Useit, wady Thai, and wady Shubei- keh, the last boint;; in its Icnvcr jiart called also wady Taiyibeh, or having a junction with one of that name. Between Useit and Taiyibeh, the coast-range of these