DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5074#0121
MAS ADA.
105
tiny, delicate, white snail shells such as we had seen in
the Tadmor Desert, and in other desert places since;
and our Arabs picked up great lumps of gypsum, which
they offered to us as valuables. We met a couple of
goatherds, whose shining bodies were nearly black, and
almost naked ; they were overwhelmed with astonish-
ment, not merely at the unusual sight of travellers, but
at their being ladies : Sheikh Hamzeh engaged one of
them as guide, and he led us to a little spring at the foot
of the mountain, now called Sebbeh, once crowned with
the famous Jewish fortress of Masada. He told the
goatherd to show us the way up, but for some time the
only answer he got was that woman's foot could never
mount that rock. It certainly looked rather appalling.
The rock on which Masada stands is a perpendicular
of 1500 feet high, facing the sea — it projects from the
line of cliffs, and would be entirely separated from them
by the deep chasm which runs behind it, but for a
narrow connecting neck of smooth sloping rock ■— up
this neck we were to climb. Sheikh Hamzeh and the
Bedoueens took off their sandals and abbahs, and we
pinned up our riding habits closely around us—(they
were, nevertheless, in rags when we descended)—and
then we slowly crept up the slope : above this there was
about fifty feet of naked rock wall.to be got up somehow
— once there was but a ledge of some three inches wide
to stand on whilst Abou Dahouk scrambled up the
smooth face seven or eight feet higher, and then, leaning
over, pulled us up by main force : one false step and we
should have gone to the bottom of the chasm. We
found a paved path at the edge, probably the road lead-
ing to the " White Promontory," on which Flavius Silva
raised the bank for his battering rams, and were soon on
the wide plateau above. Safely landed there, it may be
105
tiny, delicate, white snail shells such as we had seen in
the Tadmor Desert, and in other desert places since;
and our Arabs picked up great lumps of gypsum, which
they offered to us as valuables. We met a couple of
goatherds, whose shining bodies were nearly black, and
almost naked ; they were overwhelmed with astonish-
ment, not merely at the unusual sight of travellers, but
at their being ladies : Sheikh Hamzeh engaged one of
them as guide, and he led us to a little spring at the foot
of the mountain, now called Sebbeh, once crowned with
the famous Jewish fortress of Masada. He told the
goatherd to show us the way up, but for some time the
only answer he got was that woman's foot could never
mount that rock. It certainly looked rather appalling.
The rock on which Masada stands is a perpendicular
of 1500 feet high, facing the sea — it projects from the
line of cliffs, and would be entirely separated from them
by the deep chasm which runs behind it, but for a
narrow connecting neck of smooth sloping rock ■— up
this neck we were to climb. Sheikh Hamzeh and the
Bedoueens took off their sandals and abbahs, and we
pinned up our riding habits closely around us—(they
were, nevertheless, in rags when we descended)—and
then we slowly crept up the slope : above this there was
about fifty feet of naked rock wall.to be got up somehow
— once there was but a ledge of some three inches wide
to stand on whilst Abou Dahouk scrambled up the
smooth face seven or eight feet higher, and then, leaning
over, pulled us up by main force : one false step and we
should have gone to the bottom of the chasm. We
found a paved path at the edge, probably the road lead-
ing to the " White Promontory," on which Flavius Silva
raised the bank for his battering rams, and were soon on
the wide plateau above. Safely landed there, it may be