e
shape of a cross, bowing himself thousands and thousands of times a
day till his head touched his feet. The northern and southern sides of
the valley are cut off from the rest of the world by gigantic masses
of rocks as steep and solid as the bastions of a fortress; only
towards their summit, at an elevation of some three to four hundred
yards, is a little strip of green vegetation visible.

Darkly visible at intervals in this long and steep rocky wall are the
mouths of a series of caverns, of various sizes, all close together.
It looks as if some monstrous antediluvian race had cut two or three
stories of doors and windows into the living rock, in order to make
themselves palaces to dwell in.

The walls of these caverns are so rugged, their bases are so
irregular, that it is scarcely conceivable that they could be the
work of human hands, unless, indeed, the arched concavities of the
chasms and the regular consecutiveness of the series may be assumed to
bear witness to the wonder-working power of finite forces.

Three of the entrances to these caverns have all the loftiness of
triumphal arches; nay, one of them, carved in the base of the rock, is
so exceptionally vast that it rather resembles the nave of a huge
church, and is said to penetrate the whole mountain to the sea beyond.
It is said that if any one has the courage to attempt the journey, he
will discover mysterious hieroglyphics carved on the walls. Who could
have been the authors of this unknown runic language? The Chaldeans
perhaps, or the worshippers of Mithra. What hidden secrets, what human
memorials are enshrined in these symbols? That question must remain
forever without an answer.

Most probably this valley was used as a burial-place by some
long-vanished nation, whose tombs have survived them, making the whole
region still more dreadful; the gaping crevices of the rocks seem to
proclaim, as from a hundred open throats, that here an extinct race
has found its last resting-place.

Moreover, the largest cavern of all has the unusual property of
sometimes emitting whistling sounds like interrupted human voices. The
shepherds on the mountain summits listen terror-stricken to this
bellowing of its rocky throat. At first it resembles the buzzing of
imprisoned wasps, but the din gradually gathers force and volume till
it seems as if the demons of the wind had lost their way within the
cavern, and were roaring tumultuously in their endeavors to find an