Food was placed before the strangers, Essene fare, bread and hyssop. No women were to beseen: for the Essenes on this Oasis belonged to the highest class, in which marriage was forbidden: it was allowed in the inferior classes, only with strict limitations and restraints. They must speedily have become extinct, had it not been that they received many children among them for education, and that many grown-up persons constantly joined their society, weary of the cares and vicissitudes of busy life. Thus they formed a society which never died out, although no child was born among them. They allowed no traffic in their community, because it must have been carried on through the medium of gold, which they considered as the root of all moral corruption; they had no servants, for each ministered to the other; and they took no oath, that which they had taken at their admission rendering every other superfluous. Although our travellers were not admitted into the refectory of the Essenes, they were not alone. They found a multitude of sick persons assembled, who had come in hope of relief from the secret wisdom of the Essenes. They performed their cures by means of mysterious formularies, and recipes carefully preserved in their ancient books. These books had come to them in times of venerable antiquity from remote regions of the east, and were carefully studied by them, especially on the sabbath, which they held even more sacred than the other Jews. Their cures were wrought chiefly by enforcing temperance, self-command, and the dominion of the soul over the body; and with these means they performed wonders. The simplicity of their lives preserved their health to extreme old age, and not a few boasted that the spirit of prophecy had been wakened in them.