621 
WADY BADERA. 
Bone 
passed here on their pilgrimage to the holy mountain. 
of the latter contain Jewish names in Greek characters. There 
is a vast number of drawings of mountain goats and of ca 
mels, the latter sometimes represented as loaded, and with riders 
on their backs. Crosses are also seen, indicating that the in 
scribers were Christians. It should be observed that the Mo 
katteb lies in the principal route to Sinai, and which is much 
easier and more frequented than the upper road by Naszeb, which 
Itook in my way to the convent; the cliffs also are so situated as 
to afford a fine shade to travellers during the mid-day hours. To 
these circumstances may undoubtedly in great measure be attri 
buted the numerous inscriptions found in this valley. 
We rested for the night, after a day’s march of nine hours and a 
quarter, near the lower extremity of the Seyh Szeder, and just 
beyond the last of the inscriptions. The bottom of the valley is 
here rocky, and as flat as if the rock had been levelled by art. 
June 4th.—At a few hundred paces below the place where we 
had slept, the valley becomes very narrow, the mountains to the 
right approach, and a defile of granite rocks is entered in a direc 
tion W. by S. called Wady Kenna (,), where the tomb of a 
saint ofthe name of Wawa (s,),) stands. I was told afterwards 
at Cairo, by some Sinai Bedouins, that lower down in Wady Kenna 
there is a very deep cavern in the rock. At three quarters of an 
hour we passed to the right of the defile, and turned N. W. 
into a valley called Badera („t). The valley of Badera con 
sists of sand-rock, and the ground is deeply covered with sand. 
We ascended gently in it, and in an hour and three quarters 
reached its summit, from whence we descended by a narrow diffi 
cult path, down a cliff called Nakb Badera (), into an 
open plain between the mountains ; we crossed the plain, and at 
two hours and a quarter entered Wady Shellal (L2), so called from