1781.b.39, 8(24)

Inscription: Inscribed in the negative, 'Frith 177.'

Genre: Landscape Photography

View looking along the valley floor towards the peaks of Gebel Serbal: 'In this view we see the mountain from the northward, as it rises beyond the sides of the valley, and the lower slopes leading towards it base. The distance is perfectly rendered, and we lose nothing of the towering grandeur of the mountain, which often is not fully seen in the clear desert air. The view was taken during a storm, which may partly account for its great success. To this too is owing the wierd aspect of the leafless tree to the left, which gives such great vigour to the picture. No human hand could have copied that strange network of branches while representing them struggling with the storm-wind of the desert. The utter absence of vegetation—except where, in the valleys, it struggles with the uncongenial conditions in which its existence is a marvel, and, scanty and starved, makes the general barrenness more evident—gives an almost unearthly majesty to these scenes of the Arabian desert. Nature is here stripped of the beautiful colours and forms that elsewhere vary her surface, and reduced to the bare conditions of her oldest state. This naked simplicity, apart from the effect of lofty mountains and majestic forms, and of the pure air of the desert, attunes the mind to contemplation, and forbids the intrusion of earthly thoughts, which have here nothing to which they can attach themselves. May we not reverently suppose that the desert of Sinai was therefore chosen as the place for the giving of the Law to the Israelites?'