"Passing from imagination to fact," said solemnly the old surgeon, "I have seen the body of a man lying upon the ground where it had lain undisturbed for eighteen hundred years."
"Eighteen hundred years!" exclaimed several voices at once.
"Yes, eighteen hundred years; and I was the first person who set eyes upon him from the day of his death until I got into the cavern where he perished."
"A romance! a romance!" cried the minister. "Come, doctor, be communicative and tell us all about it."
"It is not a romance," said the doctor, "but the facts were certainly very curious.
"When I was a young assistant surgeon, attached to the sloop-of-war Agamemnon, we were skirting leisurely the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and anchored one morning in sight of the ruins of the ancient city of Sidon and opposite the westernmost spurs of Lebanon, the Mont Blanc of Palestine.
"There is only one picture grander than a view of Mount Lebanon from the sea, and that is a view of the sea from Mount Lebanon. I enjoyed the former so keenly that I determined to obtain the latter also. We got up a party of genial and stout fellows to ascend one of the highest peaks, armed with pick-axes, to obtain geological specimens on our way.
"We had advanced but a short distance up one of the cliffs, when we started from the scanty undergrowth some little animal--a wolf or jackal or wild dog, all of which abound on Mount Lebanon. We all joined noisily in the chase, and soon ran the frightened creature into one of the deep crevices or fissures made in the earth by the tempestuous rains of that region. Our picks were immediately brought into play, and in a short time, to our very great astonishment, instead of digging the fugitive out of a little hole in the ground, we opened our way into what was evidently the rear or back part of a cave of considerable dimensions.
"Our party crawled in one after another, myself leading the way. The contents of the place arrested our attention so strongly that we forgot the object of our chase, which had buried itself in some holes or burrows at the side of the cavern. The floor was of a yellowish-white limestone, and all eyes were immediately directed, in the rather dim light, to the figure of a man outstretched upon it.