It goes without saying that every scene from Hebrew history was localised to a square foot; but there was, besides, a rock to be seen written over in characters that none could decipher, yet identified by tradition as the writing of Jeremiah the prophet done with his finger. This rock was near the monastery. Hither came the pilgrim, to find the gate barred, whether he had sent word of his approach or not; the monastery was surrounded as a rule by two or three hundred Arabs, howling day and night, and sometimes threatening, for food; let down every now and then from a window high up. Once inside, there was the monks' well to see, the very same one at which Moses watered Jethro's sheep, and a chapel behind the choir built over the spot where had stood the burning bush that Moses saw; with Our Lady and her Baby standing in the middle thereof unharmed, say the Russian pilgrims. Then to bed; and in the morning, after being wakened, maybe, by a monk calling his brethren to "offices" by striking spears of wood and iron with a stick, for bell they had none, a start would be made up what was assumed to be Mt. Horeb, at the foot of which, on the side nearest Cairo, lay the monastery. Not far from the top were four chapels, one dedicated to St. Elijah, at the back of which was the grotto where he hid from Jezebel, forty days, fasting. At the top was the rock behind which Moses lay while God passed, and, hard by, the church of the Holy Summit and a mosque—it was a pilgrimage place for Mohammedans, too. Then down again the farther side to the valley between Mts. Horeb and Sinai, to the hospice where pilgrims stayed the night. Before reaching Sinai, and after leaving it, these travellers are in the habit of making assertions so flatly contradictory that some of them will be hardly put to it on Judgment Day; but when at Sinai, there is only one opinion—to get to the top thereof was the most terrific struggle they had ever gone through. Only one account has the least suggestion of enjoyment in it, Della Valle's; and yet his ascent was made under worse conditions than any other's.