INTERIOR OF THE CONVENT. "The Lord thee keeps, the Lord thy shade On thy right hand doth stay: The moon by night thee shall not smite, "The Lord shall keep thy soul; He shall Henceforth thy going out and in God keep for ever will." 267 Our vespers concluded, we at length withdrew to our tents. Rest was much needed, but it was not easy "to steep the senses in forgetfulness" after so exciting a day, and in circumstances so novel to us all. About midnight we were startled for a moment by the rapid tread of horses' feet, and by the clash of arms. It was the military escort that had followed us from Jerusalem. They came dashing down into the ravine, picketed their horses in an angle of the convent wall, flung down their swords and spears on the stony pavement beside our tents, and wrapping themselves up in their cloaks, were soon fast asleep, and all was silent as before. Next morning we were astir by break of day. So soon as we had breakfasted, and got our baggage and tent equipage packed up, we sent off our mukharis along with it, in advance. Although all themselves armed, one of the three Turkish soldiers was directed to accompany them as an additional protection. Meanwhile the male portion of our party proceeded to visit the convent, and were very courteously shown over it all. There was not much of any great interest to be seen. There were tawdry chapels and tombs of saints; and conspicuous among these, that of Mar-Saba himself that is Saint Saba, the alleged founder of the convent. There were many saints' pictures and saints' skulls, in short, a multitude of dead things; but nothing, apparently, that had any life in it, excepting some very sweet flowers, and one or two graceful palm-trees in the little convent garden. As for the poor monks themselves, they seemed so inanimate as to be little better than dead things too. Their chief em ployment, in addition to the ordinary mechanical routine of their conventual life, appeared to consist in dressing up and offering for sale, walking-sticks from the banks of the Jordan, and little curiosities from the Dead Sea. From the walls and terraces of the convent, overhanging the deep gorge of the Kedron, and having now the advantage of the bright morning sun, we could better understand, than was possible the night before, the peculiarities of this singular place. The hills seem to have been rent asunder by some volcanic force. The regular courses of the reddish-yellow limestone strata piled up one above another, give to the stupendous precipices that form the sides of the crevasse, the aspect of such gigantic masonry as the Titans might have reared when they warred with the gods. These precipices are full of caves, many of them far up the face of the cliffs. In these caves, it is said, that the Essenes -a Jewish sect that may be regarded as the founders of asceticism in religion-were many of them wont to live previous to, and about the commencement of the Christian era. If Pliny be correct in placing the head-quarters of the Essenes among the rocks of En-gedi (Ain-Jiddy), not more than twelve or fourteen miles south-east of Mar-Saba, the probability is all the greater that some of them may have dwelt here. Nor is it all unlikely, that the fact of those caves having been so used by the ascetics of Judaism, may have served, when monkery came into vogue, to attract the ascetics of Christianity. One particular cave the monks of the convent were most careful to point out, as that in which Saint Saba himself had lived for eight whole years, in company with a lion! This it seems was in the fifth century, and ever since, the monks of MarSaba have had a footing in this wilderness. There are about thirty of them in the convent now, and they are understood to have been much more numerous in former times. They have been here for thirteen or fourteen hundred years; and what has this monkish institution achieved? Nothing-absolutely nothing. Their convent stands in the valley of the Kedron, mid MAR-SABA BY DAYLIGHT. 269 way between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. But no water of life has ever flowed forth from it to make the wilderness and the solitary places around it glad, or to cause the desert to rejoice and to blossom as the rose. About seven o'clock we mounted our horses at the convent gate, and bade farewell to Mar-Saba. We were well pleased to have had an opportunity of inspecting it, and the rugged scenery around it, in the broad light of day; though it was impossible not to feel that it had impaired a little the strength and awfulness of those impressions which the previous night had produced. The air of mystery which the shadows of night had thrown around it was dissolved, almost distastefully, by the clear, unmistakeable, literal distinctness with which we could now see up to the very summit of every beetling crag, and down to the bottom of every yawning ravine. That glaring sun that had come up over these mountains of Moab "like a strong man rejoicing to run a race," had already sent such a flood of light through every cleft and cranny of these shattered and dislocated rocks, as to have tamed down their wildness, and stripped them of not a little of that peculiar fascination which a night view produced. The change recalled to mind the suggestive lines of Walter Scott, in reference to one of the ancient haunts of monkery in Scotland – "If you would see fair Melrose aright, In proceeding from Mar-Saba to the Dead Sea, we had to go back for about a mile and a half by the way we had come the night before. We could not otherwise get across the deep and rugged ravine of the Kedron. Returning, therefore, along the brow of the precipice, on the right or southern side of the ravine, till we had reached the upper end of the gorge of Mar-Saba, where the valley becomes more open, we rode down towards the dry bed of the water-course. As we were doing so one of the troopers of our escort, taking a shorter cut, his horse's feet slipped, and down went horse and man, head over heels, to the bottom of the valley, his long tufted spear rolling before him. Strange to say, neither man nor horse seemed to sustain any damage. By the time we had reached the spot, the fellow was already remounted, and spurring his Arab steed up the opposite bank as if nothing had happened. At this stage of our progress it occurred to us to remark that instead of two armed attendants we had four in our company. We had engaged but three; and one of these was in advance of us with the mukharis and the baggage. Evidently, therefore, we had two more than we had bargained for, and we pulled up to ask an explanation. The extra men proved to be volunteers— Arabs of some neighbouring tribe, who, hearing of a party of travellers at Mar-Saba, had come to proffer their services. Knowing nothing of them, we declined their aid, and sent them away. Our two remaining soldiers, from the garrison at Jerusalem, were now our only guards and guides. What might be their efficiency as guards we had, happily, no occasion to put to the test, but as guides they were worse than useless. The path we were now pursuing very soon became so indistinct that it was impossible for an unpractised eye to trace it. The hill sides we were climbing were bare and hard. Any scanty vegetation they bore was already all but scorched and withered. Every here and there half-a-dozen different tracks presented themselves, any one of which seemed just as likely to be the right one as any other. Meanwhile the leading soldier pushed on, keeping well a-head, and conducting us incessantly higher and higher up among the hills, till at length every vestige of a path disappeared, and we found ourselves getting upon ground so rough and broken, and among rocks and gulleys so steep and impracticable, that we were brought fairly to a stand. Fortunately we had now gained an elevation from which we could see far and wide around us. Above all, we had now full in view the |