Doctor Bronson told the boys that the monastery was founded in the fifth century by St. Sabas, or Saba, and is therefore among the oldest buildings of the kind in the East. It has an exposed position in the wilderness, and has been captured several times and plundered, the last occasion being about fifty years ago. In the seventh century it was taken by the Persians, and all the inmates were massacred; but the more modern captors have been satisfied with robbery, and sometimes the sale of the monks as slaves.
RUSSIAN PILGRIMS IN THE HOLY LAND.
Ali had obtained a permit to visit the monastery from the Greek Superior at Jerusalem. He told the travellers that they must stop when forty or fifty feet from the gate, and wait till the letter had been presented. A dozen monks came to the top of the walls and surveyed the party, while the letter was attached to a string and drawn up. The permit proved to be all right, and a small door was opened by which one after another the strangers were taken inside. No Arab is ever admitted under any pretence, and consequently Ali remained outside while the party was conducted through the place by one of the brethren who spoke French.
They saw the cavern where St. Saba lived on friendly terms with a lion, the tomb where he was buried, the church, the bones of the monks killed by the Persians, and the rooms occupied by the brethren, and also by pilgrims from the Jordan on their way to Jerusalem. A tall palm-tree bends over the summit of the roof of one of the towers. It is said to have been planted by St. Saba in person, but, whether this be so or not, the tree is certainly of very great age.
There are about sixty monks in the convent, the most of them Russians, and all adherents of the Greek Church. They eat nothing but vegetables, and fast often, and the result is they are thin and feeble. When not engaged at their devotions they employ their time in carving ornaments, crosses, and the like, from olive-wood and mother-of-pearl, which are sold to visitors or sent to Jerusalem. No woman is ever permitted to cross the threshold of Mar Saba, not even to escape the terrible storms which ravage the country at certain seasons. Harriet Martineau, Ida Pfeiffer, and other lady travellers tell how they were denied admission, and slept in a tower near the monastery, or in their tents in camp. The accommodations of the tower are very limited, and it is entered by a door which must be reached by a rope-ladder, since it is about twenty feet from the ground.
ROAD TO THE DEAD SEA.