THE CONVENT
The time required for the ascent from Haïfa to the convent is about an hour – the buildings of the institution, though often spoken of as upon the top of the mountain, being really only about two-thirds of the way up to the highest summit. The condition in which the various travelers who have visited the spot within the last hundred years have found the institution, and the accounts which they have given of the edifice and of the inmates, varies extremely according to the time of the visit. In fact, after Napoleon's defeat before Acre, the convent was entirely destroyed, and the spot was for a time deserted. The cause of this was that Napoleon took possession of the edifice for the purpose of using it as a hospital, and quartered his wounded and disabled soldiers there. The Turks, consequently, when they came and found the institution in the possession of the French, considered themselves authorized to regard it as a post of the enemy. They accordingly slaughtered the troops which they found there, drove away the monks, and blew up the buildings. From this time the convent remained desolate and in ruins for more than twenty years.
At length, between 1820 and 1830, a celebrated monk, known by the name of John Baptist, undertook the work of building up the institution again. With great zeal, and with untiring patience and perseverance, he traversed many countries of Europe and Asia to gather funds for the work, and to remove the various obstacles which are always in the way in the case of such an undertaking. He succeeded, at length, in accomplishing the work, and the convent was rebuilt in a more complete and extended form than ever before. Since that time, accordingly, the traveler finds, when he reaches the brow of the mountain where the convent buildings stand, a stately and commodious edifice ready to receive him. Like most of the other convents and monasteries of Asia, the institution serves the purpose of an inn. A monk receives the traveler and his party, and conducts them to a commodious sitting-room, furnished with a carpet, with tables, and with chairs. A corridor from this apartment leads to bed-rooms in the rear, furnished likewise in a very comfortable manner, with beds, chairs, and tables; – articles which attract the attention of the traveler, and are specially mentioned in his journal, as they are very rarely to be found in the East. On the terraces and balconies of the building the visitor, wearied with the toil of the ascent, finds seats where he reposes in peace, and enjoys the illimitable prospect which the view commands, both up and down the coast, and far out over the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
Travelers are entertained at the convent as at an inn, except that in place of a formal reckoning when they depart, they make their acknowledgment for the hospitality which they have received in the form of a donation to the monastery, the amount of which custom prescribes. The rule is that no guest is to remain longer than a fortnight – the arrangements being designed for the accommodation of travelers, and not of permanent guests. This rule, however, is not strictly enforced, except so far as to give to parties newly arriving the precedence in respect to choice of rooms, over those whose fortnight has expired. While the guests remain, they are very kindly and hospitably entertained by the monks, who appear before them clothed in a hood and cassock of coarse brown cloth, with a rope girdle around the loins, and sandals upon the feet – the ancient habit of the order. Their countenances wear a thoughtful and serious, if not sad expression.
THE GROTTOS AND CAVES
The halo of sacredness which invests Mt. Carmel proceeds from the memory of the prophet Elijah, who, while he lived on the earth, made this mountain his frequent resort, if not his usual abode. This we learn from the Scriptures themselves, as well as from the long and unbroken testimony of ancient tradition. The memorable transactions connected with the destruction of the priests of Baal, in the time of Ahab, at the conclusion of which came the sudden rain, as described in the passage already quoted, is supposed to have taken place at the foot of the mountain near this spot – and the ground on which the priests were slain is still shown, as identified by ancient tradition, on the banks of the Kishon, a little way up the valley.[5] The mountain above is full of grottos and caves. It is said that more than a thousand have been counted. The one which is supposed to have been Elijah's special abode is now within the buildings of the convent. Higher up, among the rocks behind the convent, is another which is called Elisha's cave, and at some distance below, in the bottom of a frightful chasm, into which the traveler descends by a steep and dangerous path, and which opens toward the sea, is another cavern, the largest and most noted of all. It forms a large and lofty apartment, vaulted above, and is said to have been the place where Obadiah concealed and protected the company of prophets, one hundred and fifty in number, and fed them with bread and water while they remained in their retreat.[6] This cave is called accordingly the cave of the prophets. The situation of this grotto is beyond description solitary, desolate, and sublime. Nothing is to be seen from within it but the open sea, and no sound is heard but the breaking of the surf, as it rolls in upon the rocky shore six hundred feet below.
THE PETRIFACTIONS
Among the other objects of interest and attraction for the pilgrims and travelers that visit Mt. Carmel, are certain curious stones, well known to geologists as a common mineral formation, but which pass with the pilgrims and monks for petrified grapes, dates, or melons, according to their size and configuration. These stones are round in form, and are often hollow, being lined with a crystalline incrustation within, the crystals representing, in the imagination of the pilgrim, the seeds of the fruit from which the specimen was formed. These fossils are found in a part of the mountain remote from the convent, where a stream comes down from the heights above, and they are supposed to be miraculous in their origin. The legend accounting for the production of them is this.
In the time of Elijah there was a garden and a vineyard on the spot, and one day as Elijah was passing that way, weary and faint with his journey, he looked over the wall and asked the owner of the ground to give him some of the melons and fruits that he saw growing there. The man refused the wayfarer's request, saying jestingly in his refusal, that those things were not melons and fruits, but only stones. "Stones then let them be," said Elijah, and so passed on. The gardener, on turning to examine the fruits of his garden, found to his consternation that they had all been turned into stone, and ever since that day the ground has been under a curse, and has produced nothing but stony semblances of fruit, instead of the reality. These supposed petrifactions are greatly prized by all who visit the mountain. Well informed travelers value them as specimens illustrative of a very singular superstition, and as souvenirs of their visit to the spot; – while monks and pilgrims believe them to possess some supernatural virtue. They suppose that though Elijah's denunciation proved a curse to the ground in respect to the owner, in causing it to produce these flinty mockeries, the stones themselves, being miraculous in their nature and origin, are endued with some supernatural power to protect and bless those who reverently collect and preserve them.
ORIGIN OF THE CARMELITE ORDER
The convent of Mt. Carmel, as alluded to and described by travelers during the last five hundred years is to be understood as denoting not a single building, but a series of buildings, that have risen, flourished, and gone to decay on the same spot, in a long succession, like a dynasty of kings following each other in a line on the same throne. The grottos and caverns which are found upon the mountain began to be occupied at a very early period by hermits and solitary monks, who lived probably at first in a state of separation from each other as well as of seclusion from the world. After a time however