a distance would suffice for that purpose. They are
likewise too extensive and deep to be required for magazines of grain,
such as the villages on the open plains cut into the underground rocks
for preservation of their food from the raids of the Bedaween; perhaps,
however, some were used for one of these purposes and some for the other.

Near the entrance of one of these excavations, in which there are
passages or corridors with running ornament sculptured along each side,
we found figures (now headless, of course, since the Moslem conquest)
resembling church saints in Europe--one, indeed, had its head remaining,
though disfigured, and the arms posed in the manner of the Virgin Mary
when holding the infant Saviour. These were sculptured in the chalk rock
itself, and standing in niches hollowed behind them. If these were
really what they seemed to be, they must have been made in the era of the
Latin kingdom, for the Oriental Christians have never made _images_ of
the saints.

In two other of these caverns, high up on their sides or within the
cupola, we saw short inscriptions of black paint, (if I remember
rightly,) the large characters of which had very much the general forms
of Cufic-Arabic, but not the Cufic of the old coins. There was also an
ornamented cross in this cupola, and other crosses in other chambers. We
were totally unable to satisfy ourselves as to how the inscriptions could
have been written at such inaccessible heights. Certainly the present
race of people are unable even to deface them, were they disposed to do
so.

One excavation we entered with some trouble near the top, and out of some
labyrinthine passages we descended a spiral staircase, with a low wall to
hold by in descending, all cut into the solid but soft rock; there were
also small channels for conducting water from above to the bottom--these
demonstrate the use of the whole elaborate work in this instance, namely
for holding water.

Returning to rest awhile in the house, 'Abdu'l 'Azeez assured me that
immensely tall as he is, he had had eight brothers, all at least equal to
himself; most of them had been killed in their faction battles, and his
father, taller than himself, had died at the age of thirty-one. His sons
could neither read nor write; they at one time made a beginning, but the
teacher did not stay long enough to finish the job. "However," said he,
pointing to the one sitting by us, perhaps ten years of age, "he can r