ich, at the point where the drawbridge is placed, is not more than
twelve feet wide. The interior of this building resembles St. Barlaam,
inasmuch as it consists of a confused mass of buildings, surrounding an
irregularly-formed court, of which the principal feature is the church.
The paintings in it are not so numerous as at St Barlaam, but the
iconostasis, or screen before the altar, is most beautifully carved,
something in the style of Grinlin Gibbons: the pictures upon it being
surrounded with frames of light open work, consisting of foliage, birds,
and flowers in alto rilievo, cut out of a light-coloured wood in the
most delicate manner. I was told that the whole of this beautiful work
had been executed in Russia, and put up here during the reign of Ali
Pasha, who had the good policy to protect the Greeks, and by that means
to ensure the co-operation of one half of the population of the country.

In this monastery there were thirteen or fourteen monks and several
women. On my inquiring for the library, one of the monks, after some
demurring, opened a cupboard door; he then unfastened a second door at
the back of it which led into a secret chamber, where the books of the
monastery were kept. They were in number about one hundred and fifty;
but I was disappointed at finding that although thus carefully concealed
there was not a single volume amongst them remarkable for its antiquity
or for any other cause: in fact, they were not worth the trouble of
turning over. The view from this monastery is very fine: at the foot of
the rock is the village of Kalabaki, to the east the citadel of Tricala
stands above a wide level plain watered by the river which we had
followed from its sources in Mount Pindus; beyond this a sea of distant
blue hills extends to the foot of Mount Olympus, whose summit, clothed
in perpetual snow, towers above all the other mountains. The whole of
this region is inhabited by a race of a different origin from the real
Albanians: they speak the Wallachian language, and are said to be
extremely barbarous and ignorant. Observing that the village of Kalabaki
presented a singularly black appearance, I inquired the cause: it had,
they said, been recently burned and sacked by the klephti or robbers
(some of my friends, perhaps), and the remnant of the inhabitants had
taken refuge in the two monasteries of Hagios Nicholas and Agia Mone,
which had been deserted by the monks some time before. The poor people
in