--- title: Times and Seasons description: Issues of 1842 to 1843. authors: - Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints editors: - Ebenezer Robinson - Don Carlos Smith - Smith, Joseph, Jr. - Taylor, John collections: - periodicals tags: - newspaper - times-and-seasons - nauvoo - nineteenth-century periodical: Times and Seasons volume: 4 number: 23 published: 1843-10-15 publisher: E. Robinson and D. C. Smith; later John Taylor publisher_place: Commerce and Nauvoo, Illinois language: en type: article reference: "“Letter from Rev. Durbin,” *Times and Seasons* 4, no. 23 (October 15, 1843): 365–366." printed_title: LETTER FROM REV. DURBIN. source: url: https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1843-10-15_4_23 transcription: Text from the Centerplace.org transcription (https://www.centerplace.org/history/ts/v4n23.htm), with its page breaks; this Internet Archive scan is the reference copy (its OCR was used only as a witness for OCR repair) identifier: per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1843-10-15_4_23 start_page: 365 end_page: 366 curator_note: A Mormon newspaper published by the church in Nauvoo; included for historical study. Inclusion does not imply endorsement. rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1843 (Nauvoo, Illinois); published before 1931, so public domain in the United States source: https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1843-10-15_4_23 publication_year: 1843 --- # Letter from Rev. Durbin SUMMIT OF MOUNT SINA [SINAI], } February 5, 1843. } My Dear Bishop Waugh:-How shall I put on paper what I feel this moment, as I set apart from my companions on the very summit of Mount Sina [Sinai], with the expanded plains before me in which Israel encamped at the giving of the law! It is impossible to doubt; I feel the truth, and by faith I see the lightnings, hear the thunders, and the 'trumpet waxing louder and louder,' and feel this vast world of dark, dreary desolation within which Horeb is inclosed [enclosed] as a sanctuary, quake under the tread of the Almighty. If I had been an infidel, and had come hither as I have, from Cairo, (near the ancient Memphis) by the Wady el Teb, or the 'Valley of the Wanderings,' which connects to the Red Sea, about fifteen miles south of Suez, through Wady Tamarik, by one of the most fearful and peculiar mountain-passes to be found on earth; and had I there seen the physical truth of the scriptures, where the people were 'entangled in the land,' and 'the wilderness' of the Red Sea 'had shut them in,' the only place between the Nile and the sea of which the scripture history can be affirmed; then if I stood on the opposite shore, and looked down upon the waters in which Pharaoh's host had 'sunk as lead,' and there read the triumphal song of Moses, (Exodus, chap. xv.) I should have felt that no where else, nor under any other circumstances, could that incomparable composition have been produced: then, if I had followed them 'three days in the wilderness of Shur,' to the present bitter fountain of Hamarah, (the scripture Marah,) and the next day to the Wadys Carundel and Usait, where yet are water and many trees amidst the surrounding desolation, I should have said, here is 'Elim,' with its 'twelve wells of water and three score and ten palm trees (Exod. ch. xv) and from thence following their track through Wady Feiran, I had suddenly issued through the Pass Nukh Hawy out into the Plain of Rehah, which now lies before me at the base of the perpendicular walls of Horeb, rising like a terrible battlement twelve or fifteen hundred feet high, with the valley of Wady Sheik to the right, and the wide mouth of Wady Leja to the left, and in full view of the gloomy, stern, desolate, 'thunder-splintered pinnacles,' where I now sit; I would have bowed to the holy history of Moses, simply upon the grounds of geographical accuracy, which no writer, ancient or modern, has equalled [equaled], though he wrote three thousand five hundred years ago, and in the midst of an encampment of two million, who depended upon him for guidance and salvation. Yet this accuracy is not the result of revision through successive ages, for no Jew has ever made a pilgrimage to Horeb, (which is itself a miracle,) except the prophet Elijah who fled from Jezebel, and whose pretended resting place in a rock was shown to us the other day. But the shades of evening are drawing on and the dark shadows of the lofty mountains are already projected far into the sandy plain. O! if you glorious sun, fast descending west ward behind the distant gloomy mountains, and just now with his orient beams tinting the dawn in your heavens, under which dwell all that I hold most dear on earth; if his dim beams which now fall almost level on me, could but convey to you what I feel this moment, it would be an epistle indeed. But I must hasten down from the mount of God, and rest me in the monastery; built as tradition says, where Moses beheld the burning bush. There, I hope to finish this letter, and say how I have spent the day of the Lord in his holy mountain; in a cleft of which I was so fortunate as to find a young, vigorous shrub, planted by the hand of the Almighty on his own holy hill, which I have cut, and purpose if God spare us to meet again, and spend an hour of leisure together, to present to you, and explain at length why I have adopted the new route (the southern) for Israel from the Red Sea, a route over which no one, I believe, has passed heretofore, who has written expressly on the subject, but which has often been suggested by eminent travellers [travelers], who have felt pressed with the difficulties of the northern route by Suez, among whom are Buckhardt and Laborde. I wish I could sit here in this deep solitude for an hour longer: but my companions and one guide are gone, and the other, a young active Arab, is crouched at my feet in astonishment at my writing and apparent earnestness; and seems to say as he casts a glance at the setting sun, 'the way is long and dangerous.' So I must say, Fare thee well, Sinai! I have stood upon the Alps, in the middle of July, and looked around upon the snowy empire-I have looked upon the Appenines [Apennines], and looked upon the plains of beautiful eventful Italy-I have stood upon the Albanian mount and beheld the means of the Eneid from the Cicean promontory, over the Campagna, to the eternal city and the mountains of Trivoli-I have sat down upon the pyramids of Egypt, and cast my eyes over the sacred city of Heliopolis, and the land of Goshen, the fields of Jewish bondage, and the ancient Memphis, where Moses and Aaron, on the part of God and his people, contended with Pharaoh and his servants, the death of whose 'first born of man and beast in one night' filled the land with wailing; but I have never set my feet on any spot from whence was visible so much stern, gloomy grandeur, heightened by the silence and solitude that reign around; and infinitely more heightened by the awful and sacred associations of the first great revelation in form from God to man. I feel oppressed with the spirit that breaths around me, and seems to inhabit this holy place. I shall never set down upon the summit of Sinai again, and look upon the silent and empty plains at its feet; but I shall go down a better man, and aim so to live as to escape the terrible thunders at the last day which once reverberated through these mountains, but have long since given way to the gospel of peace. I can scarcely tear myself away from this hallowed summit, and I wish I too could linger here forty days in converse with the Lord.