"I am _Shamasha_ Werda," replied that worthy with a twinkle.
"Oh! but we don't think you can be the man we mean!" protested our hosts in some consternation.
"Oh, yes! I am," persisted the delighted deacon.[71]
Despite this _contretemps_, however, we got on with our hosts very amicably. They fed us with tea and cake, and wine from their own vineyard; and finished by conducting us over their monastery and showing us all the sights.
The place must be a furnace in summer time, for the _cirque_ faces due southward; the tawny precipices are completely destitute of vegetation, and must radiate the heat mercilessly all round that breathless pit. In the caves would lurk such coolness as was going; but the lack of water must have been a sore trial in summer. Hermits, however, are generally credited with requiring a very moderate supply.
The cells lie some way up the ramp, and are reached by a steep zigzag pathway. How many of them there may be we do not pretend to guess; but we think we may safely say hundreds; for they extend laterally for several hundred yards along the concave sweep of the corrie, and (like the port-holes of an old line-of-battle ship) they are ranged up in tier above tier. They are not of any uniform pattern, like the older hermitages at Dara; and some few (probably those which have been most recently occupied) are furnished with windows and doors. A series of narrow pathways and rude rock staircases strings the whole assortment together, and by these the solitaries were enabled to assemble at their church.
Here and there the main pathway is barred by the erection of a rude arched gateway: but the only real building is the church, which is terraced out on a buttress of rock. This church is comparatively modern, dating from about 1500; but behind it, jammed against the face of the cliff, is another and much older church erected in the ninth or tenth century, and adorned with some nice bits of carving somewhat similar to the Runic work of our own land. Behind this again, excavated in the rock itself, is the veritable cell of Rabban Hormizd--a chamber some eight feet square, and approached by a sort of winding rabbit burrow. The original door and window of this cell are now closed, the church having been built up against it; and the grave of the hermit is placed in one of the walls, at a spot which is situated immediately behind the altar.