BREACH OF THE MARRIAGE-VOW.

259

may fight, rob, and kill with impunity, cannot live under the contempt of his tribe.

In regard to their yet more domestic habits, he told me that though the law of Mohammed allowed four wives, the Bedouin seldom took more than one, unless that one was barren or could not make good bread, or unless he fell in love with another girl, or could afford to keep more than one; with these and some few other extraordinary exceptions, the Bedouin married but one wife; and the chastity of women was protected by sanguinary laws, the guilty woman having her head cut off by her own relations, while her paramour, unless caught in the act, is allowed to escape; the Arabs proceeding on the ground that the chastity of the woman is a pearl above all price; that it is in her own keeping; and that it is but part of the infirmity of man's nature to seek to rob her of it.

The whole day we were moving between parallel ranges of mountains, receding in some places, and then again contracting, and at about mid-day entered a narrow and rugged defile, bounded on each side with precipitous granite rocks more than 1000 feet high. We entered at the very bottom of this defile, moving for a time along the dry bed of a torrent, now obstructed with sand and stones, the rocks on every side shivered and torn, and the whole scene wild to sublimity. Our camels stumbled among the rocky fragments to such a degree that we dismounted, and passed through the wild defile on foot. At the other end we came suddenly upon a plain table of ground, and before us

towered in awful grandeur, so huge and dark that it seemed close to us and barring all farther progress, the end of my pilgrimage, the holy mountain of Sinai. On our left was a large insulated stone, rudely resembling a chair, called the chair of Moses, on which tradition says that Moses rested himself when he came up with the people under his charge; farther on, upon a little eminence, are some rude stones which are pointed out as the ruins of the house of Aaron, where the great high-priest discoursed to the wandering Israelites. On the right is a stone, alleged to be the petrified golden calf. But it was not necessary to draw upon false and frivolous legends to give interest to this scene; the majesty of nature was enough. I felt that I was on holy ground, and, dismounting from my dromedary, loitered for more than an hour in the valley. It was cold, and I sent my shivering Bedouins forward, supposing myself to be at the foot of the mountain, and lingered there until after the sun had set. It was after dark as alone, and on foot, I entered the last defile leading to the holy mountain. The moon had risen, but her light could not penetrate the deep defile through which I was toiling slowly on to the foot of Sinai. From about half way up it shone with a pale and solemn lustre, while below all was in the deepest shade, and a dark spot on the side of the mountain, seeming perfectly black in contrast with the light above it, marked the situation of the convent. I passed a Bedouin tent, under which a group of Arabs were sleeping

THE CONVENT OF MOUNT SINAI.

261

around a large fire, and in a few moments stood at the foot of the convent wall. My camels were lying down eating their evening meal, and my Bedouins were asleep on the ground close under the walls.

Knowing that they would not be admitted themselves, they had not demanded entrance; and as I had not told them to do so, they had not given notice of my coming. The convent was a very large building, and the high stone walls surrounding it, with turrets at the corners, gave it the appearance of a fortress. Exposed as they are to occasional attacks by the Bedouins, the holy fathers are sometimes obliged to have recourse to carnal weapons. The walls are accordingly mounted with cannon, and there is no entrance except by a subterraneous passage under the garden, or by a small door in one of the walls, about thirty feet from the ground. My Bedouins had stopped under this door, and here we commenced shouting for admission, first singly, and then all together, in French, English, and Arabic; but no one came to admit us. I was strongly reminded of the scene under the walls of the little convent in the desert, on my attempted expedition to the great Oasis. Then, as now, it was a moonlight night, and the scene was a convent, a lonely habitation of Christians, with its door closed against a fellow-Christian. I remembered that then I had to force my way in and make my own welcome, and I resolved that no trifle should keep me from an entrance here. The convent belonged to the Greek church.