fought, like Ali, the giants of the lower world, he is genuine, and ofttimes amusingly truthful.
But the many questionable pages on this curious subject of the eremite, what are we to do with them? If they are imaginary, there is too much in this Book against quackery to daunt us. And yet, if Khalid has found the troglodyte, whom we thought to be an extinct species, he should have left us a few legends about it.
We have visited the ancient caverns of the Lebanon troglodytes in the cliffs overhanging the river of Wadi Kadeesha, and found nothing there but blind bats, and mosses, and dreary vacuity.
No, not a vestage of the fossil is there, not a skull, not a shinbone.
We have also inquired in the monasteries near the Cedars, and we were frankly told that no monk today fancies such a life. And if he did, he would not give his brother monks the trouble of carrying his daily bread to a cave in those forbidden cliffs.
And yet, Simeon Stylites, he of the Pillar, who remained for thirty years perched on the top of it, was a Syrian shepherd. But who of his descendants today would as much as pass one night on the top of that pillar?
Curious eleemosynary phases of our monkish system, these modern times reveal.
On our way from a journey to the Cedars, while engaged in the present Work, we passed through a pine forest, in which were some tangled bushes of the clematis.
The muleteer stops near one of these and stoops to reach something he had seen therein. No treasure-trove, alas, as he supposed; but merely a book for which he lacerated his hands and which he cursed and handed to us, saying, “This must be the breviary of some monk.”