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This is a oldest literature about booming sand. But it is difficult to get it. I reprinted it from the copy for student who have interest to the booming sand.
Edinburgh. Phil. Jaurn.[Jan]74-75(1830)
On a peculiar Noise heard at Nakuh, on Maunt Sinai
It is known from the reports of travel]er, that a low sandstone hill, which runs along the east coast of the bay of Suez, about three hours from Tor in Sinai, gives rise to a remarkable phenomenon. Here, where the ridge is about150 feet high, there is a steep acclivity named Nakuh, facing the coast, from which there is heard to proceed a striking and very penetrating noise. Seetzen, who, in the year 1810, first noticed this circumstance, says that at first it somewhat resembles the tone of an Eolian harp, afterwards that of a hollow top, and lastly was so loud that the earth seemed to shake. To the imagination of the Arabians, it resembles the tones of El. Nakuh, a long board, suspended in a horizontal position in the Greek monasteries, and there used instead of a bell, a mode of calling together the deyout now nearly prohibited : hence also ' probably the tale that a monastery is concealed in the hill. Seetzen, although he has not attempted a full explanation of this sound, maintains that it is produced by the grating of the coarse dry sand along the surface of the rock. This very obvious explanation does not appear to have been considered satisfactory, for we find an English traveller, Mr Gray, who visited this place in 1818, of another, opinion. He considers the grating of the sand not as the cause, but as an effect, of the sound, and maintains, in common with some other travellers, that the sound must, from the existence of hot-springs, viz. those of Hamam Faraulm, in the neighborhood, be of volcanic origin, although he can give no other reason for this opinion. It is certainly not easy, and probably without' experiment not possible to show, how the rolling or sliding of sand down an inclined plane, could produce the remarkable noise heard, at Nakuh. Notwithstanding this, the opinion of Seetzen has been confirmed by Professor Ehrehberg, who, in the year1823, also visited this remarkable p]ace. He ascended from the base of the hill, over its cover of sand, to the summit, where he observed the sand continually renewed by the weathering of the rock ; and convinced himself that the motion of the sand was the cause of the sound. Every step he and his companion took caused a partial sound, occasioned by the sand thus set in motion, and differing only in continuance and intensity from that heard afterwards, when the continued ascent had set loose a greater quantity of sand. Beginning with a soft rustling, it passed gradually into a murmuring, then into a humming noise, and at length into a threatening, of' such violence, that it could only be compared with a distant cannonade, had it been more continued and uniform. As the sand gradually settled again, the noise also gradually ceased. From the account of Seetzen, it is also known that this noise is often heard when animals run across the sand ; also when the ' wind blows violently, or when loose masses of rock set the sand in motion.
The sand of Nakuh is rather coarse granular, and composed of fragments of transparent quartz.(Repruduced from original literature by Miwa)