although he was utterly ignorant of the place in which he found himself,
or of the way back, he thought that anything would be better than to be
carried into helpless slavery into the savage country beyond the Jordan.
An hour, therefore, after his captors were asleep he stole to his feet,
and fearing to arouse them by exciting the wrath of one of the camels by
attempting to mount him, he struck up into the hills on foot. All night
he wandered, and in the morning found himself at the edge of a strange
precipice falling abruptly down to a river, which, some fifty feet wide,
ran at its foot. Upon the opposite side the bank rose with equal
rapidity, and to Cuthbert's astonishment he saw that the cliffs were
honeycombed by caves.

Keeping along the edge for a considerable distance, he came to a spot
where it was passable, and made his way down to the river bank. Here he
indulged in a long drink of fresh water, and then began to examine the
caves which perforated the rocks. These caves Cuthbert knew had formerly
been the abode of hermits. It was supposed to be an essentially sacred
locality, and between the third and fourth centuries of Christianity some
20,000 monks had lived solitary lives on the banks of that river. Far
away he saw the ruins of a great monastery, called Mar Saba, which had
for a long time been the abode of a religious community, and which at the
present day is still tenanted by a body of monks. Cuthbert made up his
mind at once to take refuge in these caves. He speedily picked out one
some fifty feet up the face of the rock, and approachable only with the
greatest difficulty and by a sure foot. First he made the ascent to
discover the size of the grotto, and found that although the entrance was
but four feet high and two feet wide, it opened into an area of
considerable dimensions. Far in the corner, when his eyes became
accustomed to the light, he discovered a circle of ashes, and his
conjectures that these caves had been the abode of men were therefore