ass; a fellow that goes begging about, and says he is a faint; but he is a natural fool, full as much knave as fool however; he is a thief, I know him to be a thief." "If he is a faint, said I, Hagi Haffan, as you are another, known to be fo all the world over, I don't fee why I should interfere; faint against faint is a fair battle."- " It is the Cadi, replies he, and no one else." "Come away with me, said I, Haffan, and let us see this cadi; if it is the cadi, it is not the fool, it may be the knave." He was fitting upon the ground on a carpet, moving his head backwards and forwards, and saying prayers with beads in his hand. I had no good opinion of him from his first appearance, but faid, Salam alicum, boldly; this seemed to offend him, as he looked at me with great contempt, and gave me no answer, though he appeared a little disconcerted by my confidence. "Are you the Cafr, said he, to whom that boat belongs?" "No, Sir, faid I, it belongs to Hagi Haffan." "Do you think, fays he, I call Hagi Haffan, who is a Sherriffe, Cafr?" "That depends upon the measure of your prudence, faid I, of which as yet I have no proof that can enable me to judge or decide." "Are you the Chriftian that was at the ruins in the morning? fays he." 1 "I was at the ruins in the morning, replied I, and I am a Chriftian. Ali Bey calls that denomination of people Nazarani, that is the Arabic of Cairo and Conftantinople, and I understand no other." " I am, faid he, going to Girgé, and this holy faint is with me, and there is no boat but your's bound that way, for which reason I have promised to take him with me." By thi this time the faint had got into the boat, and fat forward; he was an ill-favoured, low, fick like man, and seemed to be almost blind. You should not make rash promises, faid I to the cadi, for this one you made you never can perform; I am not going to Girgé. Ali Bey, whose slave you are, gave me this boat, but told me, I was not to ship either saints or cadies. There is my boat, go a-board if you dare; and you, Hagi Haffan, let me fee you lift an oar, or loose a fail, either for the cadi or the saint, if I am not with them. I went to my tent, and the Rais followed me. "Hagi Haffan, faid I, there is a proverb in my country, It is better to flatter fools than to fight them: Cannot you go to the fool, and give him half-a-crown? will he take it, do you think, and abandon his journey to Ginge? afterwards leave me to fettle with the cadi for his voyage thither ?" "He will take it with all his heart, he will kits your hand for halfa-crown" says Hassan." Let him have half-a-crown from me, faid I, and defire him to go about his busiess, and intimate that I give him it in charity, at fame time expect compliance with the condition." In the interim, a Christian Copht came into the tent: "Sir, faid he, you don't know what you are doing; the cadi is a great man, give him his present, and have done with him." "When he behaves better, it will be time enough for that, faid I? If you are a friend of his, advise him to be quiet, before an order comes from Cairo by Serach, and carries him thither. Your countryman Risk would not give me the advice you do?" Rifk! fays he; Do you know Rifk? Is not that Rifk's writing, faid I, shewing him a letter from the Bey? Wallah! (by God) it is, says he, and away he went without speaking a word farther. The faint had taken his half-crown, and had gone away singing, it being now now near dark. The cadi went away, and the mob dispersed, and we directed a Moor to cry, That all people should, in the night-time, keep away from the tent, or they would be fired at; a ftone or two were afterwards thrown, but did not reach us. I finished my observation, and afcertained the latitude of Dendera, then packed up my instruments, and fent them on board. Mr Norden feems greatly to have mistaken the position of this town, which, confpicuous and celebrated as it is by ancient authors, and justly a principal point of attention to modern travellers, he does not fo much as describe; and, in his map, he places Dendera twenty or thirty miles to the fouthward of Badjoura; whereas it is about nine miles to the northward. For Badjoura is in lat. 26° 3', and Dendera is in 26° 10% It is a great pity, that he who had a taste for this very remarkable kind of architecture, should have passed it, both in going up and coming down; as it is, beyond comparison, a place that would have given more fatisfaction than all Upper Egypt. While we were striking our tent, a great mob came down, but without the cadi. As I ordered all my people to take their arms in their hands, they kept at a very confiderable diftance; but the fool, or faint, got into the boat with a yellow flag in his hand, and fat down at the foot of the main-maft, faying, with an idiot smile, That we should fire, for he was out of the reach of the shot; fome stones were thrown, but did not reach us. I ordered two of my fervants with large brass ship-blunderbusses, very bright and glittering, to get upon the top of the cabin. I then pointed a wide-mouthed Swedish blunderbuss frome one of the windows, and cried out, Have a care; the next ftone that is thrown I fire my cannon amongst you, which will sweep away 300 of you instantly from the face of VOL. XI. No. 65. Uu 1 the earth; though I believe there were not above two hundred then prefent. I ordered Hagi Hassan to cast off his cord immediately, and, as foon as the blunderbuss appeared, away ran every one of them, and, before they could collect themselves to return, our vessel was in the middle of the stream. The wind was fair, though not very fresh, on which we fet both our fails, and made great way. The faint, who had been finging all the time we were disputing, began now to shew some apprehenfions for his own safety: He asked Hagi Haffan, if this was the way to Girge? and had for answer, " Yes, it is the fool's way to Girge." We carried him about a mile, or more, up, the river; then a conveni ent landing-place offering, I asked him whether he got my money, or not, last night? He said, he had for yesterday, but he had got none for to-day." Now, the next thing I have to ask you, faid I, is, Wili you. go ashore of your own accord, or will you be thrown into the Nile? He answered with great confidence, Do you know, that, at my word, I can fix your boat to the bottom of the Nile, and make it grow a tree there for ever?" "Aye, says Hagi Hassan, and make oranges and lemons grow on it likewife, can't you? You are a cheat." "Come, Sirs, faid I, lose no time, put him out." I thought he had been blind and weak; and the boat was not within three feet of the shore, when placing one foot upon the gunnel, he leaped clean upon land. We flacked our vessel down the ftream a few yards, filling our fails,. and stretching away. Upon feeing this, our faint fell into a defperate pafsion, curfing, blafpheming, and stamping with his feet, at every word crying " Shar Ullah!" i. e. may God fend, and do justice. Our people ber gan to taunt and gibe him, asking him if he would have a pipe of tobacco to warna warm him, as the morning was very cold; but I bad them be content. It was curious to see him, as far as we could difcern, sometimes fitting down, sometimes jumping and skipping about, and waving his flag, then running about a hundred yards, as if it were after us; but always returning, though at a flower pace. None of the rest followed. He was indeed apparently the tool of that rafcal the cadi, and, after his designs were fruftrated, nobody cared what became of him. He was left in the lurch, as those of his character generally are, after ferving the purpose of knaves. Account of the Marble Mountains in the Desert of the Thebaid*. THE 22d day of Auguft 1769, at half past one in the morning, we fet out full of terror about the Atouni. We continued in a direction nearly east, till at three we came to the defiles; but it was so dark, that it was impossible to difcern of what the country on each fide consisted. At day-break, we found ourselves at the bottom of a mountain of granite, bare like the former We faw quantities of small pieces of various forts of granite, and porphyry scattered over the plain, which had been carried down by a torrent, probably from quarries of ancient ages; these were white, mixed with black fpots red with green veins, and black spots. After this all the mountains on the right hand were of red marble in prodigious abundance, but of no great beauty. They continued, as the granite did, for feveral miles along the road, while the opposite side was all of dead-green, supposed serpentine marble.. It was one of the most extraordinary fights I ever saw. The former mountains were of confiderable height, without a tree or fhrub, or blade of grafs upon them; but these now before us had all the appearance, the one of having been sprinkled over with Havannah, the other with Brazil snuff. I wondered, that, as the red is nearest the fea, and the ships going down the ea Abyffinian coaft observe this appearance within lat. 26°, writers have not imagined this was called the Red upon that account, rather than for the many weak reasons they have relied upon. About eight o'clock we began to defcend smartly, and, half an hour af ter, entered into another defile like those before described, having mountains of green marble on every fide of us. At nine, on our left, we faw the highest mountain we had yet passed. We found it, upon examination, to be composed of ferpentine marble; and, through about one-third of the thickness, ran a large vein of jafper, green, spotted with red. Its exceeding hardness was such as not to yield to the blows of a hammer; but the works of old times were more apparent in it, than in any mountain we had feen. Ducts, or channels, for carrying water transversely, were observed evidently to terminate in this quarry of Jafper: a proof that water was one of the means used in cutting these hard ftones About ten o'clock, descending very rapidly, with green marble and jafper each fide of us, but no other green thing whatever, we had the first profpect of the Red Sea, and, at a quarter paft eleven we arrived at Cofleir.. It has been a wonder with all travellers, and with myself among the rest, where the ancients procured that prodigious on * From the Same. digious quantity of fine marble, with which all their buildings abound, That wonder, however, among many others, now ceafes, after having passed in four days, more granite, porphyry, marble, and jafper, than would build Rome, Athens, Corinth, Syracuse, Memphis, Alexandria, and half a dozen such cities. It seemed to be very visible, that those openings in the hills, which I call Defiles, were not natural, but artificial: and the whole mountains had been cut out at these places, to preserve a flope towards the Nile as gentle as possible: this, I suppose, might be a descent of about one foot in fifty at most, so that from the mountains to the Nile, those heavy carriages must have moved with as little draught as possible, and, at the same time, been sufficiently impeded, by, friction, so as not to run amain, or acquire an increased velocity, against which, also, there must have been other provisions contrived. As I made another excurfion to these marble mountains from Cosseir, I will, once for all, here fet down what I observed concerning their natural appearance. The porphyry shews itself by a fine purple sand, without any glofs or glitter on it, and is exceedingly agreeable to the eye. It is mixed with the native white fand, and fixed gravel of the plains. Green unvariegated marble, is generally feen in the fame mountain with the prophyry. Where the two veins meet, the marble is for fome inches brittle, but the prophyry of the same hardner as in other places. quantity than the porphyry, and nearer the Red Sea. Pompey's pillar seems to have been from this quarry. Next to the granite, but never, as I observed, joined with it in the fame mountain, is the red marble. It is covered with fand of the fame colour, and looks as if the whole mountain were spread over with brick duft. There is also a red marble with white veins, which I have often seen at Rome, but not in principal subjects, I have also seen it in Britain. Britain. The common green (called Serpentine) looks as if covered over with Brazil snuff. Joined with this green, I saw two samples of that beautiful marble they call Isabella; one of them with a yellowish caft, which we call Quakercolour; the other with a blueish, which is commonly termed Dove-colour. These two seem to divide the respective mountains with the serpentine. In this green, likewife, it was we saw the vein of jasper; but whether it was absolutely the fame with this which is the bloody jasper, or bloodstone, is what we had not time to fettle. I should first have made mention of the verde antico, the dark green with white irregular spots, because it is of the greatest value, and nearest the Nile. This is produced in the mountains of the plain green, or ferpentine, as is the jasper, and is not discoverable by the duft, or any particular colour upon it. First, there is a blue fleaky stone, exceedingly even and smooth in the grain, solid, and without fparks or colour. When broken, it is something lighter than a flate, and more beautiful than most marble; it is like the lava of volcanoes when polished. After lifting this, we come to the beds of verde antico; and here the quarrying is very obvious, for it has been uncovered in patches, not above twenty feet square. Then, in another part, the green stone has been removed, and another pit of it wrought. The granite is covered with sand, and looks like ftone of a dirty, brown colour. But this is only the change and impression the fun and weather have made upon it; for, upon breaking it, you fee it is grey granite, with black fpots, with a reddish caft, or blush over it. This red seems to fade, and fuffer from the outward air, but, upon working or polishing the furface, this colour again appears. It is in greater Uuz I faw I faw, in several places in the plain, small pieces of African marble scattered about, but no rocks or mountains of it. I suppose it is found in the heart of fome other colonred marble, and in strata, like the jasper and verde antico, and, I fufpect, in the mountains of Isabella marble, especially of the yellowest fort of it, but this is mere conjecture. This prodígious store of marble is placed upon SIR, a ridge, whence there is a descent to the east or west, either to the Nile or Red Sea. The level ground and hardfixed gravel are proper for the heavieft carriages, and will easily and smoothly convey any weight whatever to its places of embarkation on the Nile; so that another wonder ceafed, how the ancients transported those vait blocks to Thebes, Memphis, and Alexandria. To the Publisher. Warwick, March 30, 1790. I inclose a short Extract from Dr Samuel Parr's Verfion, or Catalogue Raifonnée, of the names of our modern Antiquaries. This work (now handing about in manuscript) is composed in the ftyle of Homer's Enumeration of Ships, or Virgil's Mufter-roll of Troops. The Doctor's attack, however, on Mr S. and Mr G. being quite unprovoked, will probably be resented on fome future occafion. Some notes are added by the Rev. Mr B. for the fake of unarchæological readers. (a) The Rev. Mr Pegge.] The first and happiest Dissertator on the Marmor Hardicnutienfe. (B) O. S. Brereton, Esq.] This Gentleman appears to be stigmatized, only because he has the honour of being personally and deservedly respected by his Majesty. 15 (8) Hopperarfen.] This beautiful and expreffive compound is emploved instead of a monofyllabical proper name, undescriptive of its owner, and of inharmonious found. (3) Benedictina caverna.] By these our Author is supposed to mean the gloomy hall and lugubrious apartments in Benet College, which (for aught we know to the contrary) Father Time may have pitched on for his own fepulchre. (v) Stephanifcus.] More particulars concerning this unpatriotic varlet may be found in Dr Parr's Preface to Bellendenus, page 36. (1) Flavescere. The Doctor's MS. is so obscure, that it is impossible to say whether he wrote flavefcere or Scabrefcere. The former is adopted on a prefumption that there is no fuch verb as the latter. (x) It is whimsical enough that Dr Parr, who certainly possesses a correct ear for versification, should indulge himself in Leonine gingles, and a play upon words of fimilar founds, but diftinct meanings. Thus, in his celebrated version of Hardyk-. nute's Epitaph, we have-circumfpexit et exit; and here we meet with a quibble between κέρας, cornu and zip fatum. (3) Degenerem.] There is fingular force and propriety in this epithet, Mr S. be |