Many things worthy of remembrance he told of what he had seen and heard; and no small marvel did it seem to speak with one who had stood on Mount Sinai in the wilderness. From the top of that mountain, he said, one looked down on a region stretching to the Red Sea, and in the midst of the plain there is a monastery of saintly recluses, but no man can discover any track that leads to it. Faint and far away the bells are heard tolling for prime, it may be, or vespers, and it is believed that now and again some weary traveller has reached it, but no one has ever returned. The Ishmaelites, who dwell in the wilderness, have ridden long in search of it, guided by the sound of the bells, but never have they succeeded in catching a gleam of its white walls among the palm-trees, nor yet of the green palms. The Abbot of that house, it is said, is none other than the little child whom our Lord set in the midst of His Disciples, saying, "Except ye become as little children," and he will abide on the earth till our Lord's return, and then shall he enter into the kingdom with Him, without tasting death. Speaking of the holy places, Calvary, it might be, or the Garden of Olives and the sepulchre of the Lord, and of the pilgrims who visited these, he repeated to us the saying of the saintly Father Hieronymus: "To live in Jerusalem is not a very holy thing, but to live a holy life in Jerusalem." And walking with many of our brethren on the shore of the sea and seeing the sails of the ships as they went by, he questioned us of the wonders of the great waters, and of sea-faring, and of the last edge of the living earth, and he said: "Tell me, you who abide within sight of so many ships, and who hear continually the song of the great creature Sea, how would it fare with one who should sail westward and keep that one course constantly?" We said that we knew not; it were like he would perish of famine or thirst, or be whelmed in the deep. "Ay," he said, "but if he were well provisioned, with no lack of food and water, and the weather held fair?" That we could not answer, for it seemed to us that such a one would lose heart and hope in the roofless waste, with never a stone or tree, nor any shadow save a cloud's, and turn back dismayed; but Serapion replied: "To me it appears, your Discretion, that so bold a mariner, if years failed him not, might win to the Earthly Paradise." "So have I heard," said the Bishop. "Yet here would you be sailing into the west, and for a certainty the Paradise of God was in the east. How would you give a reasonable account of this?" But we could make no reply, for we knew not; nor Serapion more than we.