This “Red Sea in the Land of Edom” (1 Kings ix. 26) is still, as Wellsted entitles it, “a vast and solitary Gulf.” It bears a quaint resemblance to that eastern fork of the northern Adriatic, the Quarnero, whose name expresses its terrible storms; while the Suez branch shows the longer stretch of the Triestine bifurcation. Yamm Elath or Eloth, as the Hebrews called El-‘Akabah, has, by the upheaval of the land, lost more of its fair proportions than its western sister. It was at one time the embouchure of the Jordan, extending up the Wady el-‘Arabah to the Asphaltite Lake (Dead Sea), before the former became, so to speak, a hill and the latter a hole. This view dates from olden times. “Si suppone,” says Cornelius à Lapide,119 “che sia un sollevamento che accadde, mentre un abbassamento formava il Mar Morto; e che il Giordano si gettasse nel Golfo Elanitico (Yamm Ailath), ciò é nel Mar Rosso, prima della destruzione di Sodoma.” For the latter date we have only to read, “When a movement of depression sank the lower Jordan Valley, and its present reservoirs, the Tiberias Lake and the Dead Sea, to their actual level.” There is nothing marvellous nor unique in the feature, as it appears to those suffering from that strange malady, “Holy Land on the Brain.” The Oxus and the Caspian show an identical formation, only the sinking has been on a smaller scale.
Wellsted was unfortunate, both in his weather and in his craft. To encounter a “sea of breakers” and “northerly gales with a high and dangerous swell” in a wretched “bugalá” (i.e. Sambúk), and in that perfect tub, the Palinurus, was somewhat like tempting Providence,—if such operation be possible. No wonder that “in this Gulf, in a course of only ninety miles, the nautical mishaps were numerous and varied.” The surveyor, however, neglected a matter of the highest interest and importance, namely, to ascertain whether there be any difference of level between the heads of the Suez and the ‘Akabah waters. The vicinity of continuous maritime chains, varying from six to nearly nine thousand feet, suggests an amount of attraction (theoretically) sufficient to cause a sensible difference of plane. It would be well worth while to run two lines of survey, one from El-‘Akabah to Suez, and the other down the eastern flank of the Sinaitic Peninsula.
The Mukhbir, like the Palinurus, promised a certain amount of excitement. Her boiler, I have said, was honeycombed; it was easy to thrust one’s fist through it. Mr. David Duguid, the engineer, who on one occasion worked thirty-six hours at a stretch, had applied for sixty new tubes, and he wanted one hundred and fifty: we began with two hundred and forty; we lost, when in the Gulf, from three to nine per diem, a total of seventy five; and the work of the engine-room and the ship’s carpenters consisted in plugging fractures with stays, plates, and wedges. Presently the steam-gauge (manomètre) gave way, making it impossible to register pressure; the combustion chamber showed a rent of eighteen inches long by one wide, the result of too rapid cooling; and, lastly, the donkey-engine struck work. Under these happy circumstances bursting was not to be expected; breaking down was, a regular collapse which would have left us like a log upon the stormy waves. A new boiler might have cost, perhaps, £900, and the want of one daily endangered a good ship which could not be replaced for £9000. I therefore determined upon a “Safer Khoriyyah,” that is, steaming by day and anchoring at night in some snug bay. It was also agreed, nem. con., to tow the Sambúk El–Musahhil, in order that, should accidents happen, it might in turn act tug to the steamer; or even, at a pinch, serve us as a lifeboat.
