1899.l.15(14)

Inscription: Signed and dated 'Frith 1858' in the negative.

Genre: Landscape Photography

View looking along the dry bed of the wadi, towards the ridged peak of Mount Serbal, supposed by some traditions to be Mount Sinai: 'In this view we see the mountain from the northward, as it rises beyond the sides of the valley, and the lower slopes falling towards its 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 minute branches while representing them struggling with the storm-wind of the desert. The shruibs to the right are also well worthy of study, although teir mazes fatigue the eye, which turns from them to the massive forms of the mountain. 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 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?'