The goal of our journey for to-day lay about eight miles distant from Jerusalem.  It was the Greek convent of “St. Saba in the Waste.”  The appellation already indicates that the region around becomes more and more sterile, until at length not a single tree or shrub can be detected.  Throughout the whole expanse not the lowliest human habitation was to be seen.  We only passed a horde of Bedouins, who had erected their sooty-black tents in the dry bed of a river.  A few goats, horses, and asses climbed about the declivities, laboriously searching for herbs or roots.

About half an hour before we reach the convent we enter upon the wilderness in which our Saviour fasted forty days, and was afterwards “tempted of the devil.”  Vegetation here entirely ceases; not a shrub nor a root appears; and the bed of the brook Cedron is completely dry.  This river only flows during the rainy season, at which period it runs through a deep ravine.  Majestic rocky terraces, piled one above the other by nature with such exquisite symmetry that the beholder gazes in silent wonder, overhang both banks of the stream in the form of galleries.

A silence of death brooded over the whole landscape, broken only by the footfalls of our horses echoing sullenly from the rocks, among which the poor animals struggled heavily forward.  At intervals some little birds fluttered above our heads, silently and fearfully, as though they had lost their way.  At length we turn sharply round an angle of the road,—­and what a surprise awaits us!  A large handsome building, surrounded by a very strong fortified wall, pierced for cannon in several places, lies spread before us near the bed of the river, and rises in the form of terraces towards the brow of the hill.  From the position we occupied, we could see over the whole extent of wall from without and from within.  Fortified as it was, it lay open before our gaze.  Several buildings, and in front of all a church with a small cupola, told us plainly that St. Saba lay stretched below.

On the farther bank, seven or eight hundred paces from the convent, rose a single square tower, apparently of great strength.  I little thought that I should soon become much better acquainted with this isolated building.

The priests had observed our procession winding down the hill, and at the first knocking the gate was opened.  Masters, servants, Arabs, and Bedouins, all passed through; but when my turn came, the cry was, “Shut the gate!” and I was shut out, with the prospect of passing the night in the open air,—­a thing which would have been rather disagreeable, considering how unsafe the neighbourhood was.  At length, however, a lay brother appeared, and, pointing to the tower, gave me to understand that I should be lodged there.  He procured a ladder from the convent, and went with me to the tower, where we mounted by its aid to a little low doorway of iron.  My conductor pushed this open, and we crept in.