Mars Saba, perched upon a crag, a human nest stock high up against a perpendicular mountain wall, is a world of grand masonry that rises, terrace upon terrace away above your head, like the terraced and retreating colonnades one sees in fanciful pictures of Belshazzar's Feast and the palaces of the ancient Pharaohs.

No other human dwelling is near.

It was founded many ages ago by a holy recluse who lived at first in a cave in the rock--a cave which is inclosed in the convent walls, now, and was reverently shown to us by the priests.

This recluse, by his rigorous torturing of his flesh, his diet of bread and water, his utter withdrawal from all society and from the vanities of the world, and his constant prayer and saintly contemplation of a skull, inspired an emulation that brought about him many disciples.

The precipice on the opposite side of the canyon is well perforated with the small holes they dug in the rock to live in.