DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12664#0303
286
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
rock had in my eyes an interest scarcely less than
that which the rod of Moses gave it ? Three names
Were written on it: one of a German, the second
of an Englishman, and the third of my early friend,
the same which I had seen above the Cataracts of
the Nile. When, a few years since, he bade me
farewell in my native city, little did I think that
I afterward should trace him beyond the borders
of Egypt, and through the wilderness of Sinai, to
his grave in Jerusalem.
Again I wrote my name under his, and, returning
by the way I came, found the superior still sitting
under the fig-tree, and, moving on, we soon reached
the convent. He hurried away to his official du-
ties, and I retired to my room. I stayed there
three or four hours, poring over the scriptural ac-
count of the scenes that hallowed the wilderness of
Sinai, with an attention that no sound disturbed.
Indeed, the stillness of the convent was at all times
most extraordinary ; day or night not a sound was
to be heard but the tolling of the bell for prayers,
or occasionally the soft step of a monk stealing
through the cloisters.
In the afternoon I lounged around the interior of
the convent. The walls form an irregular quad-
rangle, of about one hundred and thirty paces on
each side, and, as I before remarked, it has the
appearance of a small city. The building was
erected by the Emperess Helena, the mother of the
first Christian emperor, and I might almost call her
the mother of the Holy Land. Her pious heart
sent her, with the same spirit which afterward
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
rock had in my eyes an interest scarcely less than
that which the rod of Moses gave it ? Three names
Were written on it: one of a German, the second
of an Englishman, and the third of my early friend,
the same which I had seen above the Cataracts of
the Nile. When, a few years since, he bade me
farewell in my native city, little did I think that
I afterward should trace him beyond the borders
of Egypt, and through the wilderness of Sinai, to
his grave in Jerusalem.
Again I wrote my name under his, and, returning
by the way I came, found the superior still sitting
under the fig-tree, and, moving on, we soon reached
the convent. He hurried away to his official du-
ties, and I retired to my room. I stayed there
three or four hours, poring over the scriptural ac-
count of the scenes that hallowed the wilderness of
Sinai, with an attention that no sound disturbed.
Indeed, the stillness of the convent was at all times
most extraordinary ; day or night not a sound was
to be heard but the tolling of the bell for prayers,
or occasionally the soft step of a monk stealing
through the cloisters.
In the afternoon I lounged around the interior of
the convent. The walls form an irregular quad-
rangle, of about one hundred and thirty paces on
each side, and, as I before remarked, it has the
appearance of a small city. The building was
erected by the Emperess Helena, the mother of the
first Christian emperor, and I might almost call her
the mother of the Holy Land. Her pious heart
sent her, with the same spirit which afterward