CAVES OF KEEEFTO. 
549 
avenues, branching again into such numbers of dark paths, I 
cannot but conclude that many interesting chambers yet lie in 
the heart of the mountain ; possibly some, which may have even 
escaped the eye of the several banditti who at different times 
have herded here ; and others, which, though their asylums, no 
travellers or their guides may have yet explored. The passages 
are in general from eight to ten and twelve feet high, and vary 
in width from three to five and seven ; dimensions, for a sub¬ 
terranean dwelling, certainly very spacious. 
At what time these encaverned labyrinths of nature were 
first opened into by man, and adapted to his purposes, we can 
form no guess ; no tradition giving us a hint on the subject, nor 
any clew to the derivation of their name. That these caves 
have been used as places of refuge in times of warfare, and more 
often as the stronghold of public thieves, a sort of running 
account has subsisted for centuries; and while I looked from 
their jagged precipices, every parallel feature brought the noted 
caves of Galilee so strongly to my remembrance, that the terrible 
scenes described there by Josephus, seemed for a moment 
passing in horrid vision before these less tremendous cliffs. He 
paints in simple and nervous language, the manner in which the 
robbers, who inhabited those fastnesses, stood an attack which 
Herod made on them, and how at last they were compelled to 
surrender. I cannot resist repeating the passage, it being so 
entirely in harmony with the spot I am upon. “ These noted 
caves of Galilee (continues the Jewish historian,) were in an 
exceedingly abrupt mountain, running into its precipitous side, 
and encompassed at their entrances with sharp rocks. Within 
lay the robbers, with all their families about them. To scale 
the precipice to attack them, was impossible ; so Herod ordered 
