128 TKAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



a work of solid masonry. What remains of it pro- 

 jects nearly half across the chasm, and we eagerly 

 scramble towards it. We now find ourselves travers- 

 ing a smooth white limestone surface, into which, 

 where the ascent is steepest, steps have been cut. 

 On one side of us is a wall of limestone, and from it 

 project layers of petrified twigs and branches of trees. 

 The rock at our feet seems strewn with these stone 

 memorials of a bygone forest, and here people who 

 have a turn rather for fossils than for caves will have 

 their appetite abundantly gratified. Passing beyond 

 the overhanging masonry, we find that it forms a sort 

 of rampart for a little plateau of earth, upon which 

 there is another little garden about a quarter of an 

 acre in extent, the owner of which lives in a hut at 

 the mouth of a cave, and stares at us with astonish- 

 ment. At the upper end of his little garden is another 

 stone cistern, five or six feet square, fed from a capa- 

 cious spring in the rock, which has been arched over, 

 the whole embowered by fruit-trees, and forming a 

 cool and most romantic retreat from the world. So, 

 at least, thought the earliest monks, for here they 

 erected their first monastery, one chamber of which, 

 massively built, is still standing. I am inclined to 

 think, however, that the solid masonry construction 

 is of older date than the Crusades, though it may 

 have formed part of a military as well as a monkish 

 stronghold. There is a wild rocky path, which I 

 have yet to explore, leading further up the glen, by 



