Little remains to illustrate this earlier and more famous period of the monastic history of Lerins which extends to the massacre of its monks by Saracen pirates at the opening of the eighth century. The very look of the island has been changed by the revolutions of the last hundred years. It is still a mere spit of sand, edged along the coast with sombre pines; but the whole of the interior has been stripped of its woods by the agricultural improvements which are being carried on by the Franciscans who at present possess it, and all trace of solitude and retirement has disappeared. A well in the centre of the island and a palm-tree beside the church are linked to the traditional history of the founders of the abbey. Worked into the later buildings we find marbles and sculptures which may have been brought from the mainland, as at Torcello, by fugitives who had escaped the barbaric storm. A bas-relief of Christ and the Apostles, which is now inserted over the west gate of the church, and a column of red marble which stands beside it, belong probably to the earliest days of the settlement at Lerins. In the little chapels scattered over the island fragments of early sarcophagi, inscriptions, and sculpture have been industriously collected and preserved. But the chapels themselves are far more interesting than their contents. Of the seven which originally lined the shore, two or three only now remain uninjured; in these the building itself is either square or octagonal, pierced with a single rough Romanesque window, and of diminutive size. The walls and vaulting are alike of rough stonework. The chapels served till the Revolution as seven stations which were visited by the pilgrims to the island, but we can hardly doubt that in these, as in the Seven Chapels at Glendalough, we see relics of the earlier coenobitic establishment.