Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 2).djvu/39

 *dence holds out to us, the poor men who immure themselves in this wild prison condemn their bodies to extraordinary privations and hardships, not only abstaining, like Brahmins, from animal food, but likewise from the less sinful indulgences of butter, milk, and eggs. With an inconsistency, however, from which even the Pythagoreans of Hindostan are not altogether free, shellfish, crabs, and lobsters are not included within the pale of their superstitious humanity; and of these they accordingly partake as often as they can obtain a supply from their sister convent at Tor, or from Menah el Dizahab. Their ordinary food consists of bread, or biscuit, olives, dates, figs, parched pulse, salads, oil, vinegar, to which, on stated days, half a pint of date brandy is added.

From this convent to the top of Mount Sinai, a perpendicular height, according to our traveller, of nearly seven thousand two hundred feet, there was formerly a stone staircase, built by the Empress Helena; but in many places the effects of her pious munificence have disappeared, and the ascent of the mountain is now considered by the monks sufficiently difficult to be imposed as a severe penance upon their pilgrims and votaries. Dr. Shaw did not, when he had reached it, find the summit very spacious, nor does he seem to have greatly enjoyed the extensive view which it commands over scenes rendered profoundly interesting and memorable by the wanderings of the children of Israel. On descending into the desert of Rephidim, on the western side of the mountain, he was shown the rock of Meribah, from which Moses caused water to gush forth by the stroke of his wand. It was about six yards square, lying tottering, as it were, and loose near the middle of the valley, and seemed to have been formerly a part or cliff of Mount Sinai, which hangs in a variety of precipices all over this plain. The waters had now ceased to flow, but the channel