Excepting for the Mount Sinai monastery,
which from these heights looks like a little toy
fort built of blocks, the region is still and
hushed, and almost deserted. The massive walls
of the monastery raised by the peace-loving and
God-fearing monks under Justinian in 527 A D.
as a protection against the marauding bands
of Bedouins that infested that part of the coun
try when the wealth of an empire was possessed
by the builders and occupants of the monastery
are in the same condition as when built 1,500
years ago. Today, however, the Christian world
keeps a watchful eye over this mountain monas
tery and its contents, and the Bedouins, knowing
this to be the fact, keep on friendly as well as
visiting terms with the monks.
In the monastery are stored the priceless
books narrating the history of Christianity In
the tongue of every Christian nation. Slowly
the brotherhood of Mount Sinai monks are dy
ing out, there being but twenty or twenty-five
at the present time. The life and the paynot
enough to buy tobaccoare not sufficient in
ducement for young recruits to join the forces
that year by year are growing smaller. In the
course of a few years the terasurer of the
monastery will remain but a memory to remind
one of the greatness of its founder, Justinian.
