o the ancients, adamantine
being an epithet applied to the hardness of steel, and I have never seen
a diamond in any work of art of the Roman or classical era. Besides the
diamonds the cross has on the upper end and on the extremities of the
two arms three very fine and large emeralds, each fastened on with three
gold nails: it is a fine specimen of early jewellery, and of no small
intrinsic value.

The library is in a room over the porch of the church: it contains about
1500 volumes, half of which are manuscripts, mostly on paper, and all
theological. I met with four copies of the Gospels and two of the
Epistles, all the others being books of the church service and the usual
folios of the fathers. There was, however, a Russian or Bulgarian
manuscript of the four Gospels with an illumination at the commencement
of each Gospel. It is written in capital letters, and seemed to be of
considerable antiquity. I was disappointed at not finding manuscripts of
greater age in so very ancient a monastery as this is; but perhaps it
has undergone more squeezing than that inflicted upon it by the three
hills. I slept here in peace and comfort.

On the sea-shore not far from Sphigmenou are the ruins of the monastery
of St. Basil, opposite a small rocky island in the sea, which I left at
this point, and striking up the country arrived in an hour's time at the
monastery of

KILIANTARI,

or a thousand lions. This is a large building, of which the ground plan
resembles the shape of an open fan. It stands in a valley, and
contained, when I entered its hospitable gates, about fifty monks. They
preserve in the sacristy a superb chalice, of a kind of bloodstone set
in gold, about a foot high and eight inches wide, the gift of one of the
Byzantine emperors. This monastery was founded by Simeon, Prince of
Servia, I could not make out at what time. In the library they had no
great number of books, and what there were were all Russian or
Bulgarian: I saw none which seemed to be of great antiquity. On
inquiring, however, whether they had not some Greek manuscripts, the
Agoumenos said they had one, which he went and brought me out of the
sacristy; and this, to my admiration and surprise, was not only the
finest manuscript on Mount Athos, but the finest that I had met with in
any Greek monastery with the single exception of the golden manuscript
of the New Testament at Mount Sinai. It was a 4to. Evangelistarium,
written in golden letters on fin