Fri 4. [4 April 1902] My mornings are spent always in the same
manner. After lunch I rode to the Valley of the Martyrs a most
charming Wady with a copious spring and gardens of vine olive fig
and pomegranate. The spring comes out of the solid rock and flows
into a hewed out cistern. Above I drove my horse over smooth white
rocks full of extraordinary petrified branches up to where the ruined
wall of the old deir bars the narrow valley. Here the watercourse got
too narrow, so I led him up to the right onto the little plateau overgrown
with fig and olive and pomegranate where the monastery stood. In
the rock are many tombs or caves and another spring trickling into a
tank. Opposite on the left of the water[?] course is a big double cave
used as a store house and closed with a door. Above the monastery
garden the valley is wider and shallower but quite barren. I went up it
and came onto the summit near the bait es Sitt.