Tor may be known at a distance by two hills that stand near the water side, which, in clear weather, may be seen six leagues off. Just to the south-east of these is the town and harbour, where there are some palm-trees about the houses, the more remarkable, that they are the first you see on the coast. There is no danger in going into Tor harbour, the soundings in the way are clean and regular; and by giving the beacon a small birth on the larboard hand, you may haul in a little to the northward, and anchor in five or six fathom. The bottom of the bay is not a mile from the beacon, and about the same distance from the opposite shore. There is no sensible tide in the middle of the Gulf, but, by the sides, it runs full two knots an hour. At springs, it is high water at Tor nearly at twelve o’clock.
On the 9th we arrived at Tor, a small straggling village, with a convent of Greek Monks, belonging to Mount Sinai. Don John de Castro[167] took this town when it was walled, and fortified, soon after the discovery of the Indies by the Portuguese; it has never since been of any consideration. It serves now, only as a watering-place for ships going to, and from Suez. From this we have a distinct view of the points of the mountains Horeb and Sinai, which appear behind and above the others, their tops being often covered with snow in winter.
There are three things, (now I am at the north end of the Arabian Gulf,) of which the reader will expect some account, and I am heartily sorry to say, that I fear I shall be obliged to disappoint him in all, by the unsatisfactory relation I am forced to give.
The first is, Whether the Red Sea is not higher than the Mediterranean, by several feet or inches? To this I answer, That the fact has been supposed to be so by antiquity, and alledged as a reason why Ptolemy’s canal was made from the bottom of the Heroopolitic Gulf, rather than brought due north across the Isthmus of Suez; in which last case, it was feared it would submerge a great part of Asia Minor. But who has ever attempted to verify this by experiment? or who is capable of settling the difference of levels, amounting, as supposed, to some feet and inches, between two points 120 miles distant from each other, over a desert that has no settled surface, but is changing its height every day? Besides, since all seas are, in fact, but one, what is it that hinders the Indian Ocean to flow to its level? What is it that keeps the Indian Ocean up?