Page:Syria, the land of Lebanon (1914).djvu/222

SYRIA, THE LAND OF LEBANON land along the river bank is rich with verdure, a veritable Garden of the Lord.

The monastery not only spreads along the face of the cliff, but penetrates far into the mountain. What you see of it from without is hardly more than the façade of a huge, rambling structure whose principal part consists of natural caves and chambers rudely cut in the native rock. Through a little wooden door we were admitted to the largest cavern, where we saw, hanging from staples set securely into its walls, a number of great, cruel chains. People who are possessed of devils are fastened here by the neck and ankles, and during the night an angel comes and drives away the demon. The treatment has never been known to fail; for if the morning finds the sufferer still uncured, that merely shows that he did not have a devil after all, but was just an ordinary lunatic for whom the monastery did not promise relief.

Back of the cedars, there are also many fascinating excursions. The ranges of Syria being geologically "old" mountains which are worn and rounded, you can, by taking a somewhat circuitous route, reach almost any summit on horseback, but it is much more fun to go straight up the steepest slopes on foot. About 2,500 feet above the grove is a line of gently rolling plateaus whose stones have been broken and smoothed by millenniums of snow and ice. You see acre after acre entirely covered with clean, flat [ 176 ]