Solitary travellers of an enterprising turn of mind do occasionally visit this dreary wilderness; but so crushing an impression does it make on all who have the courage to gaze upon it, that they scarce wait to explore the historic ground, but hasten from it as fast as their legs can carry them.
What is there to see there, after all? A battered-down wall, as to which none can say who built it, or why it was built, or who destroyed it. A tall stone column, the column of the worthy Simon Stylites, who piled it up, stone upon stone, year after year, with his own hands, being wont to sit there for days together with arms extended in the shape of a cross, bowing himself thousands and thousands of times a day till his head touched his feet. The northern and southern sides of the valley are cut off from the rest of the world by gigantic masses of rocks as steep and solid as the bastions of a fortress; only towards their summit, at an elevation of some three to four hundred yards, is a little strip of green vegetation visible.
Darkly visible at intervals in this long and steep rocky wall are the mouths of a series of caverns, of various sizes, all close together. It looks as if some monstrous antediluvian race had cut two or three stories of doors and windows into the living rock, in order to make themselves palaces to dwell in.
The walls of these caverns are so rugged, their bases are so irregular, that it is scarcely conceivable that they could be the work of human hands, unless, indeed, the arched concavities of the chasms and the regular consecutiveness of the series may be assumed to bear witness to the wonder-working power of finite forces.
Three of the entrances to these caverns have all the loftiness of triumphal arches; nay, one of them, carved in the base of the rock, is so exceptionally vast that it rather resembles the nave of a huge church, and is said to penetrate the whole mountain to the sea beyond. It is said that if any one has the courage to attempt the journey, he will discover mysterious hieroglyphics carved on the walls. Who could have been the authors of this unknown runic language? The Chaldeans perhaps, or the worshippers of Mithra. What hidden secrets, what human memorials are enshrined in these symbols? That question must remain forever without an answer.
Most probably this valley was used as a burial-place by some long-vanished nation, whose tombs have survived them, making the whole region still more dreadful; the gaping crevices of the rocks seem to proclaim, as from a hundred open throats, that here an extinct race has found its last resting-place.
Moreover, the largest cavern of all has the unusual property of sometimes emitting whistling sounds like interrupted human voices. The shepherds on the mountain summits listen terror-stricken to this bellowing of its rocky throat. At first it resembles the buzzing of imprisoned wasps, but the din gradually gathers force and volume till it seems as if the demons of the wind had lost their way within the cavern, and were roaring tumultuously in their endeavors to find an exit. This noise is generally followed by the blast of the simoon, which no doubt penetrates into the cavern through a gap on the other side, and thus gives rise to the mysterious voices of the valley.
But not on these occasions only; at other seasons also the cavern is wont to speak. It happens now and then that a shepherd, more foolhardy than his fellows, ventures into the hollow of the cavern to light a fire, and, full of bravado, provokes the dzhin of the cavern to appear, till the cavern suddenly re-echoes his voice; but it does not re-echo the words he utters, but replies in a soft, low accent to the insolent youth, bidding him withdraw and cease to mock God's creatures.
On another occasion an adulterous woman and her paramour strolled towards the spot with the intent of using the deep darkness as the cloak for their sinful joys; but what terror filled the guilty lovers when their sweet whispering was interrupted by a voice which was neither near nor far, and belonged neither to man nor spirit, but whose cold sigh turned their hot blood into ice as it whispered, "Allah is everywhere present!"
Once, too, some robbers were lying in wait for their comrades, whom they intended to murder in that place, when a roaring began in the cave which seemed to make the very welkin ring, and the murderers clearly distinguished the terrible words: "The eye of Allah is upon you, and the flames of Morhut are burning for your souls!" whereupon, insane with fright, they rushed from the cave.