pulled out a great big manuscript of a brown
and musty appearance and of prodigious weight, which was tied together
with a cord. "Here is a box!" exclaimed the two monks, who were nearly
choked with the dust; "we have found a box, and a heavy one too!" "A
box!" shouted the blind abbot, who was standing in the outer darkness of
the oil-cellar--"A box! Where is it? Bring it out! bring out the box!
Heaven be praised! We have found a treasure! Lift up the box! Pull out
the box! A box! A box! Sandouk! sandouk!" shouted all the monks in
various tones of voice. "Now then let us see the box! bring it out to
the light!" they cried. "What can there be in it?" and they all came to
help and carried it away up the stairs, the blind abbot following them
to the outer door, leaving me to retrace my steps as I could with the
volumes which I had dug out of their literary grave.

CHAPTER VIII.

View from the Convent Wall--Appearance of the Desert--Its grandeur
and freedom--Its contrast to the Convent Garden--Beauty and
luxuriance of Eastern Vegetation--Picturesque Group of the Monks
and their Visitors--The Abyssinian Monks--Their appearance--Their
austere mode of Life--The Abyssinian College--Description of the
Library--The mode of Writing in Abyssinia--Immense Labour required
to write an Abyssinian book--Paintings and
Illuminations--Disappointment of the Abbot at finding the supposed
Treasure-box only an old Book--Purchase of the MSS. and Books--The
most precious left behind--Since acquired for the British Museum.

On leaving the dark recesses of the tower I paused at the narrow door by
which we had entered, both to accustom my eyes to the glare of the
daylight, and to look at the scene below me. I stood on the top of a
steep flight of stone steps, by which the door of the tower was
approached from the court of the monastery: the steps ran up the inside
of the outer wall, which was of sufficient thickness to allow of a
narrow terrace within the parapet; from this point I could look over the
wall on the left hand upon the desert, whose dusty plains stretched out
as far as I could see, in hot and dreary loneliness to the horizon. To
those who are not familiar with the aspect of such a region as this, it
may be well to explain that a desert such as that which now surrounded
me resembles more than anything else a dusty turnpike-road in England
on a hot summer's day, extended intermi