Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/27

Rh east. These have jambs, ornamented with small holes, evidently drilled with a screw, the marks of the worm being visible in each hole. The angles of the jambs are cut away so as to form a kind of pilaster, a slight projection in the upper part of which serves to indicate a capital. The jambs of the doorways, the lintels, and the threshold-stones, are pierced with holes, showing the position of the hinges and bolts of the doors. The irregular ellipses formed by these walls terminate at either end in a kind of apse; in several of these apses the inner wall remains to a considerable height, and bends inwards as it rises, as if it had converged to a conical roof, formed by approaching horizontal courses of masonry. Within the apses are no remains at present of fallen vaulting, as might have been expected if these recesses had been covered over; but the disappearance of all such evidence in situ may be accounted for by the fact that these ruins have been cleared out within a recent period.

The inner walls of these ellipses are pierced with a number of square apertures cut out of the large blocks, some of which seem intended to admit light or sound, like the openings in Gothic churches to which ecclesiologists have given the name hagioscope. Others communicate with small chambers like cupboards, cut in the rock.

Within the enclosures are several altars, formed by large slabs of stone set upon short pillars. One very tall piece of rock towers above these enclosures. Steps cut in the rock lead up to the top, in which is a hollow, as if for a man to stand in. Perhaps this