146 TRAVELS IN THE EIGHTIES. 



the night, and will sometimes serve the useful 

 purpose of keeping away the rats, with which the 

 convents swarm. Generally his windows will over- 

 look and sometimes overhang the ^Egean Sea, sup- 

 ported by picturesque wooden beams, or will look out 

 over vineyards or over mountain torrents or wild 

 rocky scenery, above which looms the splendid sharp 

 peak of Athos, too often swathed in vapour, rising so 

 steep and precipitous that the snow in winter cannot 

 cling to its sides. The services commence almost 

 every night at midnight and last till morning, and on 

 the eves of feast-days which comprise a third of the 

 days in the year the services commence considerably 

 earlier. On these days in monasteries of a certain 

 class they have two meals and on other days only one 

 but rarely, if ever, any meat. So, about midnight 

 he will be waked from his slumbers by the queer, 

 quaint, musical, distant beating of the sounding-board, 

 called a simandro, which will produce a lulling, mag- 

 netising effect upon his senses. The sound, uncanny 

 in the extreme, is used to arouse the monks to their 

 nightly services. Now near, now far away, its 

 musical, rhythmical cadence sounds across the vaults 

 and passages of the old monasteries and at length dies 

 away, to be renewed at regular intervals until 

 " morning doth appear." Or, on the eves of the feast- 

 days aforesaid, dedicated to some supposed saint, he 

 will hear the harsher sound of the convent church 

 bells. Should he follow the monks into the church 

 where the central services are held (for there are as 



