Читать книгу Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader - Benj. N. Martin - Страница 62

For two hours we ascended this wild, narrow pass, enclosed between stupendous granite cliffs, whose debris encumbered the defile, often rendering the passage difficult and dangerous. Escaping from the pass, we crossed the head of a basin-like plain, which declined to the south-west, and ascending gradually, gloomy, precipitous, mountain masses rose to view on either hand, with detached snow-beds lying in their clefts. The caravan moved slowly, and apparently with a more solemn, measured tread. The Bedouins became serious and silent, and looked steadily before them, as if to catch the first glimpse of some revered object. The space before us gradually expanded, when suddenly Tualeb, pointing to a black, perpendicular cliff, whose two riven and rugged summits rose some twelve or fifteen hundred feet directly in front of us, exclaimed, "Gebel Mousa!" How shall I describe the effect of that announcement? Not a word was spoken by Moslem or Christian, but slowly and silently we advanced into the still expanding plain, our eyes immovably fixed on the frowning precipices of the stern and desolate mountain. We were doubtless on the plain where Israel encamped at the giving of the law, and that grand and gloomy height before us was Sinai, on which God descended in fire, and the whole mountain was enveloped In smoke, and shook under the tread of the Almighty, while his presence was proclaimed by the long, loud peals of repeated thunder, above which the blast of the trumpet was heard waxing loader and louder, and reverberating amid the stern and gloomy mountain heights around; and then God spoke with Moses.

[Footnote 10: A native of Kentucky; is deemed one of the most eloquent divines in the Methodist church.]

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=Leonard Bacon, 1802.= (Manual, p, 480.)

From a "Missionary Sermon."