CHAPTER XVI.

Ascent of Sinai.-A Miracle.-The Grotto of Elias.-A Monkish Legend.-The Pinnacle of Sinai.-Anchorites.-Mohammeded and his Camel.-An Argument.-Legend of St. Catharine.-The Rock of the Tables.-The Stone struck by Moses.-Descriptionn of the Convent.-Habits and Character of its Inmates.

THE next day was one of the most interesting of my life. At eight o'clock I was breakfasting; the superior was again at my side; again offering me all the convent could give, and urging me to stay a month, a fortnight, a week, at least to spend that day with him, and repose myself after the fatigues of my journey; but from the door of the little room in which I sat I saw the holy mountain, and I longed to stand on its lofty summit. Though feeble and far from well, I felt the blood of health again coursing in my veins and congratulated myself that I was not so hackneyed in feeling as I had once supposed. I found, and I was happy to find, for the prospective enjoyment of my farther journey, that the first tangible monument in the history of the Bible, the first spot that could be called holy ground, raised in me feelings that had not been awakened by the most classic ground of Italy and Greece, or the proudest monuments of the arts in Egypt.

Immediately after breakfast I rose to ascend the mountain. The superior conducted me through the convent, which, even more than at night, seemed like a small city, through long galleries built of stone, with iron doors, and finally through a long subterraneous passage to the outer garden, a beautiful spot in the midst of the surrounding barrenness, now blooming with almonds and oranges, lemons, dates, and apricots, and shaded by arbours of grape-vines to the extreme end of the walls. At this moment I gave but a passing glance at the garden; and hurrying on to the walls, where a trusty Arab was sitting as sentinel, I descended by a rope, the superior, or papa, as he is called, bidding me farewell, and telling me not to fatigue myself or be long away. At the foot of the wall I found Toualeb waiting orders for my final departure. He said that he must consult with his tribe before he could make any bargain, and I told him to come to the convent in two days, prepared to start upon the third.

Immediately behind the wall of the convent we began to ascend. A Bedouin dwarf, the first specimen of deformity I had seen among the Arabs, led the way, with a leather bag of refreshments on his back. An old monk followed, with long white hair and beard, supporting himself by a staff; after him came a young novice from Corfu, who spoke Italian, and then Paul and myself. For some time the ascent was easy. Ever since the establishment of the convent, it had been the business of the monks to improve the path to the top of the mountain; and for about twenty minutes we continued ascending by regular steps. In half an hour we came to a beautiful fountain under an overhanging rock. Besides the hallowed localities in and around the mountain, consecrated by scenes of Bible history, almost every spot has some monkish legend, of which that connected with the fountain is a specimen. Taking a long draught from its stony bed, our younger companion began the story somewhat in the usual Eastern form. "Once there was a poor shoemaker" who, in making his pilgrimage to the holy mountain, on a hot day, sat down under the shade of the impending rock. He was an industrious man, and, while resting himself, took out his cobbling materials and began to cobble; he was a good man, and while he sat there at his work, he thought of the wickedness of the world and its temptations, and how the devil was always roaming about after poor cobblers, and resolved to leave the world for ever, and live under that rock. There was no water near it then; but, as soon as he had made this resolution, the water gushed forth, and a living fountain has remained there ever since. The same year there was a dispute between the Greek and Armenian patriarchs at Cairo, and the pacha gave notice that he would decide in favour of him who should perform a miracle. This was more than either had power to do; but the Greek dreamed one night of the poor cobbler, and the next morning despatched a messenger to the mountain with a dromedary, and a request that the holy man should come and perform a miracle. The cobbler was a modest man, and said he would be glad to make a pair of shoes for the patriarch, but could not perform a miracle. The messenger, however, insisted upon taking him to Cairo, where, roused into a belief of his own powers, he ordered a mountain to approach the city. The obedient mountain marched till it was told to stop, and there it stands to the present day.

In half an hour more we came to a little chapel dedicated to the Virgin, to which, some two or three hundred years ago, certain holy men, who wished to separate themselves more completely from the world, had withdrawn from the convent, and here lived and died upon the mountain. The chapel had been fitted up several times, but the Bedouins had always entered and destroyed everything it contained. The situation was well suited for retirement; quiet and isolated, but not dreary, and fitted for a calm and contemplative spirit. Paul was particularly struck with it; and, in a moment of enthusiasm, said he would like to end his days there; and, with his characteristic prudence, asked if he could get his meals from the convent. The monk did not approve his enthusiasm, and told him that his inspiration was of the devil and not of God, but suddenly said that there were no hermits now; that all men thought too much of eating and drinking, and indulging in luxuries; sighed, kissed the cross, asked Paul for a cigar, and then walked on again. Passing through a defile of precipitous

rocks, we soon reached a gate about three feet wide, where formerly, when pilgrimages to this place were more frequent, a guard was stationed, to whom it was necessary to show a permission from the superior of the convent. A little beyond this was another narrow passage secured by a door, where it was formerly necessary to show a pass from the keeper of the gate, and where a dozen men could make a good defence against a thousand. Soon after we entered a large open space, forming a valley surrounded on all sides by mountains; and on the left, high above the others, rose the lofty peak of Sinai. It is this part of the mountain which bears the sacred name of Horeb. In the centre, enclosed by a stone fence, is a tall cypress, the only tree on the mountain, planted by the monks more than a hundred years ago. Near it is a fountain, called the fountain of Elias, which the prophet dug out his own hands when he lived in the mountains, before he was ordered by the Lord to Jerusalem. According to the monks, the prophet is still living somewhere in the world, wandering about with Enoch, and preparing for the great final battle with Antichrist. A little above is an old church, with strong walls and iron doors, now falling and dilapidated, and containing a grotto, called the grotto of Elias, which, according to the legend, formed the prophet's sleeping-chamber. I crawled into the rocky cell, and, thanks to my travelling experience, which had taught me not to be fastidious in such matters, found the bedroom of the prophet by no means an uncomfortable place; often in the desert I would have been thankful for such a shelter.

Here our dwarf left us, and, continuing our ascent, the old monk still leading the way, in about a quarter of an hour came to a table of rock standing boldly out, and running down almost perpendicularly an immense distance to the valley. I was expecting another monkish legend, and my very heart thrilled when the monk told me that this was the top of the hill on which Moses had sat during the battle of the Israelites and the Amalekites, while Aaron and Hur supported his uplifted hands, until the sun went down upon the victorious arms of his people. From the height I could see, clearly and distinctly, every part of the battleground, and the whole vale of Rephidim and the mountains beyond; and Moses, while on this spot, must have been visible to the contending armies from every part of the field on which they were engaged.

Some distance farther on the old monk stopped, and, prostrating himself before a stone, kissed it devoutly, and then told me its history. He said that the last time the monks in the convent were beset by the Arabs, when their communication with Cairo was cut off, and death by the sword or famine staring them in the face, the superior proposed that they should put on their holiest vestments, and, under the sacred banner of the cross, ascend in a body, and for the last time sing their Te Deum on the top of the mountain. On their return, at this stone they met a woman with a child, who told them that all their danger was over and, in accordance with her words, when they returned to the convent they found the Arabs gone, and forty camels from Cairo laden with provisions standing under the walls. Since that time they had never been molested by the Arabs, "and there is no doubt," continued the old monk, "that the woman was the mother of God, and the child the Saviour of the world."

But away with monkish superstition. I stand upon the very peak of Sinai, where Moses stood when he talked with the almighty. Can it be, or is it a mere dream? Can this naked rock have been the witness of that great interview between man and his Maker? where, amid thunder and lightning, and a fearful quaking Of the mountain, the Almighty gave to his chosen people the precious tables of his law, those rules of infinite wisdom and goodness, which, to this day, best teach man his duty towards his God, his neighbour, and himself?

The scenes of many of the incidents recorded in the Bible are extremely uncertain. Historians and geographers place the garden of Eden, the paradise of our first parents, in different parts of Asia; and they do not agree upon the site of the Lower of Babel, the mountain of Ararat, and many of the most interesting places in the Holy Land but of Sinai there is no doubt. This is, the holy mountain; and, among all the stupendous works of Nature, not a place can be selected more fitted for the exhibition of Almighty power. I have stood upon the summit of the giant Etna, and looked over the clouds floating beneath it, upon the bold scenery of Sicily, and the distant mountains of Calabria - upon the top of Vesuvius, and looked down upon the waves of lava, and the ruined and half-recovered cities at its foot; but they are nothing compared with the terrific solitudes and bleak majesty of Sinai. An observing traveller has well called it "a perfect sea of desolation." Not a tree, or shrub, or blade of grass is to be seen upon the bare and rugged sides of innumerable mountains, heaving their naked summits to the skies, while the crumbling masses of granite around, and the distant view of the Syrian desert, with its boundless waste of sands, form the wildest and most dreary, the most terrific and desolate picture that imagination can conceive.

The level surface of the very top, or pinnacle, is about sixty feet square. At one end is a single rock about twenty feet high, on which, as said the monk, the spirit of God descended, while in the crevice beneath his favoured servant received the tables of the law. There, on the same spot where they were given, I opened the sacred book in which those laws are recorded, and read them with a deeper feeling of devotion, as if I were standing nearer and receiving them more directly from the Deity himself.

The ruins of a church and convent are still to be seen upon the mountain, to which, before the convent below was built, monks and hermits used to retire, and, secluded from the world, sing the praises of God upon his chosen hill.

Near this, also in ruins, stands a Mohammedan mosque; for on this sacred spot the followers of Christ and Mohammed have united in worshipping the true and living God. Under the chapel is a hermits cell, where, in the iron age of fanaticism, the anchorite lingered out his days in fasting, meditation, and prayer.

In the East, the fruitful parent of superstition, occurred the first instances of monastic life. A single enthusiast withdrew himself from the society of his fellow-men, and wandered for years among the rocks and sands of the desert, devoting himself to the service of his Maker by the mistaken homage of bodily mortification. The deep humility of the wanderer, his purity and sincerity, and the lashes and stripes he inflicted upon his worn and haggard body, excited the warm imaginations of the Christians of the East. Others, tortured by the same overpowering consciousness of sin, followed his example, emulating each other in self-punishment; and he was accounted the most holy, and the most worthy to be received at the right hand of God, who showed himself most dead to all the natural feelings of humanity. The deserts of the Thebaid were soon covered with hermits; and more than seventy thousand anchorites were wasting their lives in the gloomy wilds of Sinai, startling the solitude with the cries of their self-inflicted torture. The ruins of their convents are still to be seen upon the rudest mountain side, in the most savage chasm, or upon the craggiest top; and, strange as the feeling may seem, my very soul cleaved to the scene around me. I too felt myself lifted above the world, and its petty cares and troubles, and almost hurried into the wild enthusiasm which had sent the tenants of these ruined convents to live and die among the mountains.

Blame me not, reader, nor think me impious, that on the top of the holy mountain of Sinai, half unconscious what I did, I fired at a partridge. The sound of my gun, ringing in frequent echoes from the broken and hollow rocks, startled and aroused me; and, chasing the bird down the mountain side, I again reached "the place in Horeb," and threw myself on the ground under the palm-tree, near the fountain of Elias.

I always endeavoured to make my noonday meal near some rock or ruin, some tree or fountain ; and I could not pass by the fountain of the prophet. My Arab dwarf had anticipated my wants; and now prepared some of the genuine Mocha, which every Arabian (and an Arabian only) knows how to prepare, exhaling an aroma that refreshes and invigorates the wearied frame; and, in the desert, a cordial more precious than the fineest wines of France or Madeira. Seated under the palm-tree, monks, Bedouins, Paul, and myself, all together, eating our frugal meal of bread and fruit, accompanied with long draughts from the fountain of Elias, I talked with the Bedouins about the mountain, consecrated in the eyes of all true Mussulmans by the legend of Mohammed and his camel.

In one respect I was very unlucky in this journey. I had no guide-book. Having formed no definite plan in my wanderings, I never knew with what books to provide myself, and therefore carried none, trusting to chance for finding what I wanted. As might be supposed, when I needed them most it was utterly impossible to obtain any; and from the borders of Egypt to the confines of the Holy Land I was in some measure groping in the dark; the Bible was my only guide; and though the best a man could have in his pilgrimage through life, and far better than any other in this particular journey, yet others would have been exceedingly valuable, as illustrating obscure passages in the sacred book; and particularly as referring, besides, to circumstances and traditions other than scriptural, connected with the holy mountain.

In the book of one of the modern travellers, I believe of the lamented Burckhardt, I remembered to have seen a reference to a tradition among the Mussulmans, that Mohammed had ascended the mountain on the back of his camel, and from its lofty summit had taken his departure to the seventh heaven, and that the prints of the beast's footsteps were still to be seen on the surface of the rock. I questioned the Arab about this story. In the more engrossing interest of the scene, I had forgotten to look for the prints of the camel's feet, and told him, with great truth, that I had examined everything carefully, but had not seen them. The old monk, who had sat quietly munching his bread and figs, scandalized at my inquiring into such a profane story, and considering the holy mountain in a manner his property, broke out unceremoniously, and denounced it as a wicked invention of the Arabs, averring that everybody knew that, before Mohammed got half way up, the camel stumbled, fell, and broke the neck of the Prophet. This was equally new and monstrous to the Arab, who swore that the legend was true, for it was written in the Koran, and that he himself had often seen the print of the foot; and he accounted for my not seeing it by the very sensible and satisfactory explanation that it was visible only to the eyes of true believers. The good father was completely roused by this obstinate resistance in the scandal; and a reckless Bedouin and an old Bulgarian monk, sitting by a fountain among the deserts of Sinai, were soon disputing with as much clamour and bitterness as if they had been brought up in the midst of civilization, to harangue from opposing pulpits, the preachers of the promises and the denouncers of the curses of rival churches. One thing the pious father especially insisted on; the strong point in his argument, and particularly ludicrous, as coming from such an old bundle of superstitions, was the impossibility of a camel's foot making, an impression on stone; and, judging from this alone, one might have suspected him of having had in his youth some feeble glimmerings of common sense; but a few minutes after he told me the legend of Mount St. Catharine.

Mount St. Catharine is the great rival of Sinai in the range of mountains in the Arabian peninsula. They rise like giant twin brothers, towering above every other; the only thing which detracts in the slightest degree the awful supremacy of Sinai, is the fact that Mount St. Catharine is somewhat the highest. The legend is, in the early days of the Christian church, the daughter of a king of Alexandria became converted. While her father remained a pagan, she tried to convert him; but, indignant at the attempt, he cast her in prison, where she was visited by the Saviour, who entered through the keyhole, and married her with a ring which is now in the hands of the Empress of Russia. Her father cut her head off, and angels carried her body to the top of the mountain and laid it on the rock. For centuries no one knew where it was deposited, the Christians believing that it had been carried up into heaven, until about two centuries ago, when a monk at the convent dreamed where it had been laid. The next morning he took his staff and climbed to the top of the mountain; and there, on the naked rock, fresh and blooming as in youthful beauty, after a death of more than a thousand years, he found the body of the saint. The monks then went up in solemn procession, and, taking up the body, bore it in pious triumph to the convent below, where it now lies in a coffin with a silver lid, near the great altar in the chapel, and receives the homage of all pious pilgrims.

It was nearly dark when I returned to the convent; and, in no small degree fatigued with the labours of the day, I again threw myself on the mat and welcomed rest. In the evening the superior came to my room, and again we mingled the names of Greece and America. I was weary, and talked with the old man when I would rather have been asleep; but with his own hands he drew mats and cushions around me, and made me so comfortable, that I could not refused to indulge him with the rare luxury of conversation on the subject of his native land, and of the world from which he was shut out for ever. He was single-hearted and simple, or, perhaps I should rather say, simple and ignorant; I remember, for instance, when we had been embarrassed for a time by the absence of the younger monk who served as our interpreter, the old man told me very gravely, and as a new thing, which I could not be expected to know, but which he did not think the less of me for not knowing, that formerly, in the time of Adam, all mankind spoke but one tongue; and that men became wicked, and built a tower to reach to heaven (he had forgotten its name), and that God had destroyed it and confounded the impious builders with a variety of tongues. I expressed my astonishment, as in duty bound, and denounced, in good set terms, the wickedness of our fathers, which now prevented us from enjoying at our ease the sweets of friendly converse.

Before breakfast the next morning he was with me again, with a striped abbas over his black gown, and a staff in his hand, prepared to accompany me outside the walls. I was surprised. He had told me that he had not left the convent for more than three years, when he had accompanied a great apostolic vicar, holding a distinguished situation in the church of France; and this was the last and only time he had ever bestowed such attention on a stranger. The kindhearted old man intended it as an act of extraordinary kindness; I received it as such; and, as such, he told me I could mention it to my friends in America. Humble and unimportant as was that old monk in the great drama of life, I felt proud of his kindness-prouder than I should have been of a reception at a European court, or a greeting from royal lips-and my pride was the greater that I did not ascribe it to any merits of my own. My only claim was that possessed by all my countrymen-I was an American; my country had heard the cry of his in her distress, and from her seat across the broad Atlantic had answered that cry.

We passed, as before, through the subterraneous passages into the garden. The miserable Bedouins who were gathered around outside, waiting for the bread which they received daily from the convent, surprised at the unexpected but welcome appearance of the superior, gathered around him and kissed his hands and the hem of his garment. He had provided himself with an extra sack of bread, which he distributed among them, and which they seemed to receive with peculiar pleasure from his hands. The monks of Mount Sinai are now no longer obliged to have recourse to carnal weapons for protection; peace reigns between them and the Bedouins; and part of the price of peace is the distribution of twenty-five hundred rolls of bread among the poor around the mountain. I did not think so much of this price, when I saw the bread, hard, black, and mouldy, and such as the meanest beggar in our country would not accept from the hand of charity. But the Bedouins took it, and thanked God and the monks for it.

Hurrying away from these grateful pensioners, we descended by the defile through which we had entered; and again passing the ruins of the house of Aaron, and the spot from which he preached to the assembled people, we came to a long flat stone, with a few holds indented in its surface, which the superior pointed out as that on which Moses threw down and broke the tablets of the law when he descended from the mountain and found the Israelites worshipping the golden calf. About half an hour farther on was another atone much holier than this; at first I understood the interpreter that it was the petrifaction of the golden calf; but gathered, with some difficulty, from the superior, that it was the mould in which the head of the golden calf was run. He pointed out to me the prints of the head, ears, and horns, clear even to the eyes of a man of sixty; and told me the story of the golden calf somewhat differently from the Bible account. He said that the people, wanting another god, came up with one accord and threw their golden ornaments upon that stone, and agreed by acclamation that when was melted they would worship whatever should come out; three times it came out the head of a calf; and then they fell down and worshipped it.

Some distance farther on we passed on our right a Hebrew burying-ground; "The burial-place," said the superior, "of the Israelites who died in their forty years wandering among the mountains of Sinai." The old man had heard these things so long, and had told them so often, and believed them so firmly, that it would have broken his heart -besides shaking his confidence in my Christian principles -if I had intimated the slightest doubt. I asked whether the Jews ever came in pilgrimage to the mountain of their fathers; and he told me that, four years ago, two Asiatic Jews had come disguised as Europeans, and attempted to pass themselves as Christians; "but," said the priest, with a vindictive spirit lighting his usually mild eye, "I detected them under their sheep's clothing, and they did not stay long in the convent." Yet I remember seeing on the wall of the convent, and with no small degree of interest, the name of an American Jew.

Farther on, turning into a valley which opened between the mountains on the left, we came to a garden belonging to the convent, which presented a strange appearance in the midst of the surrounding desolation, producing all kinds of fruits; where one must almost wonder to see a blade of grass put forth, the orange. the date, the fig, and the vine are growing in rich luxuriance. The soil is formed from the debris of rocks washed from the mountains; and, though too light for strong products, for fruit it is better than the rich valley of the Nile. Sitting under the shade of the fig-tree, the superior pointed out to me a rent in the mountain opposite, which, he said, was caused by an earthquake, that had swallowed up two friends and servants of Moses of whom I had never heard before, and who were so swallowed up for disobeying the orders of their earthly master.

The superior, unused to such a task as he had imposed upon himself, here completely gave out, and I left him panting under the shade of his fig-tree, while I went on to the valley of Rephidim; and, passing another garden, came to the rock of Horeb, the stone which Moses struck with his rod, and caused the waters to gush out. The stone is about twelve feet high, and on one side are eight or ten deep gashes from one to three feet long, and from one to two inches wide, some of which were trickling with water. These gashes are singular in their appearance, though probably showing only the natural effect of time and exposure. They look something like the gashes in the bark of a growing tree, except that, instead of the lips of the gash swelling and growing over, they are worn and reduced to a polished smoothness. They are, no doubt, the work of men's hands, a clumsy artifice of the early monks to touch the hearts of pious pilgrims; but the monks of the convent, and the Creek pilgrims who go there now, believe in it with as much honesty and sincerity as in the crucifixion.

Will the reader forgive me if I say that this rock had in my eyes an interest scarcely less than that which the rod Of Moses gave it? Three names were written on it: one of a German, the second of an Englishman, and the third of my early friend, the same which I had seen above the Cataracts of the Nile. When, a few years since, he bade me farewell in my native city, little did I think that I afterward should trace him beyond the borders of Egypt, and through the wilderness of Sinai, to his grave in Jerusalem.

Again I wrote my name under his, and, returning by the way I came, found the superior still sitting under the fig tree, and, moving on, we soon reached the convent. He hurried away to his official duties, and I retired to my room. I stayed there three or four hours, poring over the scriptural account of the scenes that hallowed the wilderness of Sinai with an attention that no sound disturbed. Indeed, the stillness of the convent was at all times most extraordinary; day or night not a sound was to be heard but the tolling of the bell for prayers, or occasionally the soft step of a monk stealing through the cloisters.

In the afternoon I lounged around the interior of the convent. The walls form an irregular quadrangle, of about one hundred and thirty paces on each side, and, as I before remarked, it has the appearance of a small city. The building was erected by the Empress Helena, the mother of the first Christian emperor, and I might almost call her the mother of the Holy Land. Her pious heart sent her, with the same spirit which afterward animated the crusaders, to search out the holy places referred to in the Bible; and when she found one, she erected a monument to mark it for the guidance of future Christians; and the pilgrim may see the fruits of her pious labours from the mountain where God spake in thunder down to the place where the cock crew when Peter denied his master. The convent is capable of containing several hundred people. It was originally built as a place of defence - but the necessity of keeping it fortified has passed away; a parcel of rusty guns are lying in a sort of armory, and a few small cannon are frowning from the walls. The cells of the monks, compared with anything else I had seen in the East, are exceedingly comfortable; on one side, raised about a foot from the door, is a stone platform, on which the monk spreads his mat and coverlet, and the furniture includes a table, chairs, sometimes two or three books, and the fragment of a looking-glass. There are twenty-four chapels erected to different saints, in which prayers are said regularly in rotation. I went through them, but saw nothing to interest me until I came to the church of the convent. Here I was surprised to find the handsomest Greek church I had seen, except in Russia; the floor and steps were of marble; and distributed around in various places were pillars and columns, the works of ancient artists, plundered from heathen temples, and sent to this lonely spot in the desert by the active piety of the early Christian emperors. The convent was raised in honour of the transfiguration, and the dome of the altar contains a coarse but antique painting of the holy scene. In front, near the great altar, in a coffin covered with rich palls and a silver lid, are the bones of St. Catharine, the patroness of the convent. Among the chapels, one, I remember, is dedicated to Constantine and Helena, and another to Justinian and his wife; but the great object of interest is the holy of holies, the spot where God appeared to Moses in the burning bush. A chapel is now erected over it, and the pilgrim, on entering, hears at this day almost the same words which God addressed to Moses, "Put thy shoes from off thy feet, for the ground whereon thou treadest is holy ground;" I pulled off my shoes and followed my conductor. The place is now bedizened with Grecian ornaments; the rude simplicity of nature which beheld the interview between God and his servant is utterly gone, and tile burning bush is the last thing one would think of on the spot where it grew.

There are but few objects of interest besides. In one of the chapels are a copy of the Evangelists, written in letters of gold by the Emperor Theodosius, and portraits of the four evangelists and the twelve apostles, and all the psalms of David, written in an inconceivably small space by a young virgin who came out and died in the desert.

The condition and character of the monks formed a subject of no little interest for my speculating observation, and I investigated their habits and dispositions as closely as bienseance and my inability for conversing with them, except through an interpreter, would permit. So far as I could judge, they seemed perfectly contented; but they were, for the most part, mere drones and sluggards, doing little good for themselves or others, and living idly upon the misapplied bounty of Christian pilgrims. I do not mean to say that they were bad men. Most of them were too simple to be bad; and, if there was evil in their nature, they had no temptation to do evil; and, after all, the mere negative goodness which does no harm is not to be lightly spoken of, in a world so full of restlessness and mischief as this of ours. Many of them had been a long time in the convent, some as much as twenty or thirty years, and one, who was now a hundred and five years old, had been seventy-five years worshipping the Lord, after his fashion, at the foot of Sinai. Among them were a baker, shoemaker, and tailor; they baked, cooked, made and mended for themselves, and had but one other duty to perform, and that was four times daily to kneel down and pray. Nothing could be more dull and monotonous than their lives, and none but the most sluggish or the most philosophic spirit could endure it. They were philosophers without knowing it, and dozed away their existence in one unvarying round of prayer, and meals, and sleep. Their discipline was not rigid, save in one particular, and that a matter in regard to which there has been much discussion with us; they never ate meat; no animal food of any kind is permitted to enter the walls of the convent. During all the various periods of their abode in the convent, some thirty, some forty, and one more than seventy-five years, not one of them had eaten a particle of animal food; and yet I never saw more healthy-looking men. Hardier men I have seen, for they are indolent in their habits, take but little exercise, and in most cases show a strong disposition to corpulency; but I had some little opportunity of testing their ability to endure fatigue and, though the superior soon walked himself out of breath, the monk who guided us up the mountain, and who was more than sixty years old, when he descended, after a hard day's labour, seemed less tired than either Paul or myself. I am aware that climate may make a difference; but, from in own observation and experience, I am perfectly satisfied that, even in our climate, invalids and persons of sedentary habits, and, indeed, all except labouring men, would be much benefited by a total abstinence from animal food. I have travelled for a week at a time, night and day, not under the mild sky of the East, but in the rough climate of Russia, and found myself perfectly able to endure the fatigue upon bread and milk diet; and I have been told that the Tartars who ride post from Constantinople to Bagdad in an incredibly short time, never sleeping, except on horseback, during the whole of their immense journey rigidly abstain from anything more solid and nutritious than eggs.

The night of my return from the top of Sinai, I awake when the bell tolled for midnight prayers; and, wrapping myself in my Arab cloak, took a small lamp in my hand, and, groping my way along the passage, descended to the chapel, where the monks were all assembled. I leaned behind a protecting pillar and watched their proceedings; and it was an event of no common interest, thus, at the dead hour of night, to be an unobserved witness of their sincerity, and earnest though erroneous devotion. There was not one among them who did not believe he was doing God good service, and that his works would find acceptance at the throne of Grace, and obtain for him that blessed immortality which we are all seeking.

CHAPTER XVII

Diet of the Monks.-Advantages of Abstinence.-Scruples overcome.-A mysterious Brother.-The Convent Burial-place.-Strange Charnel houses.-Death in a Mask.-Familiarity breeds Contempt.-A Man of two Centuries.-Doubts and Fears.-Parting Gifts.-The Farewell.

The next day was Sunday, and early in the morning the superior sent for me to come down and take my meal with the holy brotherhood. The monks were all at the table, and it was the first time I had had so good an opportunity of seeing them together. They were about thirty in number, mostly old men with long white beards, all Greeks, and some with faces as noble as Grecian chisel ever traced. There was not a beard at table less than eight inches long; and my own, though it would have been rather distingue at home, blushed more than its natural red at its comparative insignificance. The table was a long naked board; the vessels were all of metal, and before each man were a wooden spoon, and a drinking-cup in the form of a porringer. It was Lent, the season of forty or fifty days' fasting, during which even fish, eggs, and oil are prohibited. A large basin of boiled beans was set before each of the monks and, besides this, there were black olives, beans in water, salad, vinegar, salt, dates, and bread. My companions had never been pampered with luxuries, and ate their bread and beans with as keen a relish as if they were feasting on turtle and venison, and drank their water as freely as though it was Tokay or Burgundy. The meal was eaten in silence, all appearing of opinion that they came simply to eat; and the only unusual circumstance I remarked was the civility of my immediate neighbours in pushing the tempting viands before me. It was curious to see how they found the way to their mouths through such a wilderness of beard, and the spoon disappearing in a huge red opening, leaving the handle projecting from a bush of hair. The room in which we ate was perhaps sixty feet long, having at one end a chapel and altar, and a reading-desk close by, in which, during the whole of the meal, a Monk was reading aloud from the lives of the saints. After dinner the monks all rose, and, wiping their mouths, walked in a body to the foot of the altar, and two of them commenced burning incense. One of my neighbours took me by the hand, and led me up with them. There they kneeled, prayed, and chanted. and went through a long routine of ceremonies, in which, so far as it was practicable, they carried me with them. They could not get me up and down as fast as they moved themselves, but they flung the incense at me as hard as at the worthiest of them all. I supposed this to be a sort of grace after meat, and that there it would end; but to my surprise and great regret, I found that this was merely preparatory to the administration of the sacrament. It was the second time I had been placed in the same situation; and a second time, and even more earnestly than before, I wished for that state of heart which, according to the notions of its solemnity in which I had been brought up, would have permitted me to join in the sacred rite. I refused the consecrated bread, and the monk, after pausing some moments, apparently in astonishment, passed on to the next. After he had completed the circle, the superior crossed and brought him back again to me; I could not wound the feelings of the good old man, and ate the consecrated bread and drank the wine. May God forgive me if I did wrong; but, though rigid censors may condemn, I cannot believe that I incurred the sin of "the unworthy partaker' b yielding to the benevolent importunity of the kind old priest. After this we walked out on the terrace, under the shade of some venerable grape-vines, and, sitting down along the wall, took coffee. The reading-desk was brought out, and the same monk continued reading for more than two hours.

I had noticed that monk before; for he was the same who had conducted me through the church, had visited me in my room, and I had seen him in his cell. He was not more than thirty-five, and his face was as perfect as art could make it; and the sunbeams occasionally glancing through the thick foliage of the vines, and lighting up his pale and chiselled features and long black beard, made him one of those perfect figures for a sketch which I had often dreamed of, but had never seen. His face was think pale, and emaciated; the excitement of reading gave it a hectic flush, and he looked like a man who, almost before the springtime of life was over, had drained the cup of bitterness to its dregs. If I am not deceived, he had not always led so peaceful and innocent a life, and could unfold a tale of stirring incident, of wild and high excitement, and perhaps of crime. He was from the Island of Tenos, but spoke Italian, and I had talked with him of the islands of Greece, and the ports in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, with many of which he seemed familiar; and then he spoke of the snares and temptations of the world, and his freedom from them in the convent, and above all, of the perils to which men are exposed by the wiles and witcheries of the sex; and I could not but imagine that some beautiful Grecian girl, not less false than fair, had driven him to the wilderness. One of the other monks told me that it was about the time when the last of the pirates were swept from the Mediterranean that the young islander had buried himself in the walls of the convent. They told me, too, that he was rich, and would give all he had to the fraternity. Poor fellow! They would soon come into possession.

In the garden of the convent is the cemetery of the monks. Though not of a particularly melancholy humour, I am in a small way given to meditation among the tombs; and, in many of the countries I have visited, the burial-places of

the dead have been the most interesting objects of examination. The superior had promised to show me his graves; and something in the look of the reader reminding me of death and burial, I now told the old man of his promise, and he hobbled off to get the key; for it appeared that the cemetery was not to be visited without his special permission. At the end of a long arbour of grape-vines, a narrow staircase cut in the rock, which I had not seen before, led down to an excavated square of about twenty feet; on the left of which was a small door opening into a vault, where formerly the bodies of the dead monks were laid on an iron bedstead, and there suffered to remain until all the corruptible part was gone, and only the dry bones remained. Now they are buried for about three years, or as long as may be necessary to effect the same object; and, when the flesh and muscles have disappeared, the bones are deposited in the great cemetery, the door of which is directly opposite. Within the door is a small antechamber, containing a divan and a portrait of some saint who wandered eighteen years in the desert without meat or drink. From this the door opens into the cemetery, which was so different from any I had ever seen, that I started back on the threshold with surprise. Along the wall was an excavation about thirty feet in length, but of what depth I could not tell. It was enclosed by a fence, which was three or four feet above the ground, and filled with human sculls; and in front, extending along the whole width of the chamber, was a pile of bones about twenty feet high, and running back I could not tell how far. They were very regularly disposed in layers, the feet and shoulders being placed outward alternately, and by the side of the last skeleton was a vacant place for the next that should be ready.

I had seen thousands of Egyptian mummies, and the catacombs of Chioff, the holy city of Russia, where the bodies of the saints are laid in rows, in open coffins, clothed in their beat apparel, and adorned with gold and jewels and in that extraordinary burial-place I had seen, too, a range of small glasses in a dead Stone wall, where wild and desperate fanatics had made their own tombs, with their own hands building themselves in an upright position against the walls, leaving a small hole open in front by which to receive their bread and water; and when they died, the small opening was closed with a piece of glass, and the body of the saint was left thus buried. I had seen the catacombs of the Capuchin convent at Syracuse, where the bodies of the monks are dried and laid in open coffins, or fixed in niches in the walls, with their names labelled on their breasts; and in the vault of the convent at Palermo I had seen the bodies of nobles and ladies, the men arranged upright along the walls, dressed as in life, with canes in their hands and swords by their sides; and the noble ladies of Palermo lying in state, their withered bodies clothed in silks and satins, and adorned with gold and jewels; and I remember one among them, who, if then living, would have been but twenty, who two years before had shone in the bright constellation of Sicilian beauty, and, lovely as a light from heaven, had led the dance in the royal palace; I saw her in the same white dress which she had worn at the ball, complete even to the white slippers, the belt around her waist, and the jewelled mockery of a watch hanging at her side, as if she had not done with time for ever; her face was bare, the skin dry, black, and shrivelled, like burnt paper; the cheeks sunken; the rosy lips a piece of discoloured parchment; the teeth horribly projecting; the nose gone; a wreath of roses around her head; and a long tress of hair curling in each hollow eye. I had seen these things, and even these did not strike me so powerfully as the charnel-house at the convent of Mount Sinai. There was something peculiarly and terribly revolting in this promiscuous heaping together of mortal relies; bones

upon bones; the old and young; wise men and fools; good men and bad; martyrs and murderers; masters and servants; bold, daring, and ambitious men-men who would have plucked bright honour from the moon, lying pell-mell with cowards and knaves. The superior told me that there were more than thirty thousand skeletons in the cemetery-literally an army of dead men's bones. Besides the pile of sculls and bones, in a chamber adjoining were the bones of the archbishops, in open boxes, with their names and ages labelled on them, and those of two sons of a king of Persia, who came hither on pilgrimage and died in the convent; their iron shirts, the only dress they wore on their long journey from their father's court, are in the same box. Other skeletons were lying about, some in baskets, and some arranged on shelves, and others tied together and hanging from the roof, In one corner were the bones of St. Stephen -not the martyr who was stoned to death at Jerusalem, but some pious anchorite of later and less authentic canonization.

As to the effect upon the mind of such burial-places as this, or the catacombs to which I have referred, I can say from my own experience that they destroy altogether the feeling of solemnity with which we look upon the grave. I remember once, in walking through long rows of dead, arranged like statues in niches of the wall, I remarked to the friar who accompanied me that he promenaded every day among his old acquaintances-; and he stopped and opened a box, and took out piecemeal the bones of one who, he said, had been his closest friend, and laughed as he pulled them about, and told me of the fun and jokes they two had together.

Returning to the convent, and passing through the great chapel on the way to my room, I met one who, in the natural course of things, must soon be borne to the charnel-house I had just left. It was the aged monk of whom, I have before spoken; he whose years exceeded by thirty-five the seventy allotted to man. I had desired an opportunity of speaking with him, and was curious to know the workings of his mind. The superior had told me that he had outlived every feeling and affection; that he spent all his time in prayer, and had happily arrived at a new and perfect state of innocence; and I remember, that after comparing him to the lamb, and every other emblem of purity, the good superior ended, with a simplicity that showed his own wonderful ignorance of human nature, by declaring that the old monk was as innocent as a young girl. It occurred to me that this might be a dubious comparison; but as I knew that the monastic life of the old eulogist, and his long seclusion from the world, had prevented him from acquiring any very accurate knowledge of young girls, I understood him to mean the perfection of innocence.

I looked upon the old monk with exceeding interest, as a venerable relic of the past, For more than seventy-five years he had wandered around the holy mountain, prostrating himself daily at the foot of the altar, and, with three generations of men, had sung the praises of God under the hallowed peak of Sinai. I approached him, and told him my pleasure in knowing so old and holy a man, and the wonder with which his story would he heard in my own far-distant country. But the old man listened with impatience. The other monks were rather pleased when I stopped to talk with them, but he seemed anxious to get away, and stood, as I supposed with his hand on his heart, as if pleading some religious duty as an excuse for his haste; but it turned out that lie was merely complaining of the emptiness of his stomach, and was hungering for his evening meal. I was sorry to have the interesting picture I had conceived of this monkish Methuselah marred and effaced by so matter-of-fact an incident; but I describe him as I found him, not as I would have wished him to be.

Ever since I had left Cairo I had been troubled with misgivings touching my ability to undertake the journey by Petra. I had hoped to recruit during my few days residence at the convent, but I was obliged to acknowledge to myself that I was, to say the least, no better. The route through Idumea was difficult and dangerous, requiring all the energy of mind and body that perfect health could give; and a wrong movement from the point where I now was might place me in a position in which the loudest cry of distress could never be heard. It is not necessary to inflict upon the reader all my hesitations; it is enough to say, that with one of the strongest efforts of resolution I was ever called upon to make, I abandoned my cherished project of visiting Petra and the land of Idumea; and, with a heavy heart, wrote to Mr. Gliddon that I was a broken reed, and was bound on the safe and direct road to Gaza. My kind friend the superior would not hear of my leaving the convent; but I resisted his importunities, and laughingly told him I did not like that unchristian way of burial, cutting up and piling away a man's bones like sticks of firewood to dry. Finding me resolved, he took me to his room, and gave me from his little store of treasures some shells and petrifactions (which I threw away when out of his sight), engravings of Mount Sinai, and incidents of which it has been the scene, the rudest and most uncouth conceptions that ever were imagined, and a small box of manna, the same, as he religiously believed which fed the Israelites during their sojourn in the wilderness. He gave me, too, a long letter, written in modern Greek, and directed to the governor of Gaza, certifying that I was a pilgrim from America; that I had performed all the duties of the pilgrimage, and was now travelling to the holy city of Jerusalem. The letter contained, also, a warm and earnest recommendation to all the Greek convents in the Holy Land to receive and comfort, feed and clothe, and help and succour me in case of need. Last of all, he put on my finger a ring of the simplest form and substance, and worthy to accompany the palmer's staff of an older age. Every pilgrim to Mount Sinai receives one of these rings; and, like the green turban of the Mussulman, which distinguishes the devout hadji who has been to Mecca, among the Christians of the East it is the honoured token of a complete and perfect pilgrimage.

At eight o'clock in the morning the whole convent was in commotion, preparing for my departure. My old Bedonin guide had been out among his tribe, and arrived the night before with three times as many men and camels as I wanted, ready to conduct me to Akaba or Gaza. I took my leave of the holy brotherhood, who now sped me on my way as kindly and warmly as they had welcomed me on my arrival; and, after a long and most affectionate parting with the good old superior, who told me that in all probability he should never see me again, but should always remember me, and begged me not to forget him-assuring me that there in the desert I always had a home, and telling me that if, when I returned to my own country, misfortune should press upon me, and I should find my kindred gone and friends standing aloof, I must shake the dust from off my feet, and come back and live with him in the wilderness-I fastened the rope around me, and was let down for the last time to the foot of the convent-wall. A group of Bedouins, beggars, and dependants upon the charity of the convent gathered around, and invoked blessings upon me as I started. Twice since my arrival there had been rain. In that dry and thirsty desert, every drop of water falls upon the earth like precious ointment, and "welcome," says the Arab, "is the stranger who brings us rain."

I turned my back upon the rising sun, and felt by comparison on my homeward way; but a long journey was still before me; I had still to cross "the great and terrible desert" of the Bible, which spread before the wandering Israelites its dreary and eternal sands, from the base of Sinai to the Promised Land.