ot of
very great antiquity or interest; the shrines are only of sufficient
size to contain two skulls and a few bones; the style and execution of
the ornaments are also much inferior to many works of the same kind
which are met with in ecclesiastical houses.

The refectory is a separate building, with an apsis at the upper end, in
which stands a marble table where the sacred bread used by the Greek
church is usually placed, and where, I believe, the agoumenos or the
bishop dines on great occasions. The walls of this room are also
painted: not, however, with the representations of celebrated eaters,
but with the likenesses of such thin, famished-looking saints that they
seem most inappropriate as ornaments to a dining-room. The kitchen,
which stands near the refectory, is a circular building of great
antiquity, but the interior being pitch dark when I looked in, and there
coming from the door a dusty cold smell, which did not savour of any
dainty fare, I did not examine it.

The monks and the abbot had now assembled in the room where the capstan
stood. Ten or twelve of them arranged themselves in order at the bars,
the net was spread upon the floor, and, having sat down upon it
cross-legged, the four corners were gathered up over my head, and
attached to the hook at the end of the rope. All being ready, the monks
at the capstan took a few steps round, the effect of which was to lift
me off the floor and to launch me out of the door right into the sky,
with an impetus which kept me swinging backwards and forwards at a
fearful rate; when the oscillation had in some measure ceased the abbot
and another monk, leaning out of the door, steadied me with their hands,
and I was let down slowly and gently to the ground.

When I was disencumbered of the net by my friends the robbers below, I
sat down on a stone, and waited while the rope brought down, first my
servants, and then the baggage. All this being accomplished without
accident, I sent the horses, baggage, and one servant to the great
monastery of Meteora, where I proposed to sleep; and, with the other
servant and the palicari, started on foot for a tour among the other
monasteries.

A delightful walk of an hour and a half brought us to the entrance of
the monastery of Hagios Stephanos, to which we gained access by a wooden
drawbridge. The rock on which this monastery stands is isolated on three
sides, and on the fourth is separated from the mountain by a deep chasm
wh