Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/188

 never intruded upon us, appearing only when they came at our call, but were always ready to respond to any little request we had to make, showing us through the Church, the Chapel of the Burning Bush, and the Library. Of course we did not accept this as a free gift. When it came to the settling, we paid as much as we should have paid at the first hotel in Cairo. But no matter for that: we were none the less glad that we could obtain such accommodation at any price, and recorded our acknowledgments in the Visitors' Book, saying, as we could in all sincerity, that we were "most grateful for their kindness and hospitality." The privilege that we prized the most was the use of the reception-room, where we could sit all day, reading and writing, as if we were in our libraries at home; while we heard just enough of the life of the Convent that went on around us to fill our ears with a drowsy hum, and to fall in with our desire for undisturbed repose. Towards evening we would go up on the roof to watch the sunset as it touched the red tops of the granite mountains, and to inhale the evening wind that came up the valley. Miss Martineau, when she was here some forty years ago, was struck with the wild, strange beauty of this narrow pass — a beauty not unmingled with terror, when she thought of what it must be at other seasons of the year. She writes: "How the place can be endured in Summer, I cannot conceive. The elevation of the whole region, it is true, is such that the season is more backward than that of Cairo by two months; but this elevation can avail little to an abode placed in an abyss of bare rocks. I was struck with this the first night, when I went out into our corridor after ten o'clock to see the moon come up between two peaks, her light being already bright on the western summits. Still and sweet as was the scene — the air being hazy with moonlight in this rocky