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only pretext which could plead its excuse, and their vengeance is downright atrocity.

"Alexandria was still ringing, at the time of my arrival at that city, with the noise of an affaffination committed, a few years before, on the perfon of the representative of the French nation, in that port. A French hair-dreffer was taking the diverfion of fhooting in the environs of the town; an Arab picked a quarrel with him, which unfortunately terminated in his difcharging his piece at the Arab, and killing him. This murder was presently noised abroad. The people took fire, and, in their transport, refolved to facrifice every European they could lay hold of. Their fury was with no little difficulty appeafed, by delivering up the murderer to them, whom they hanged in the public square; but an Arab, the brother of him who was killed, though a witness of the execution, did not think himself sufficiently revenged; he bound himself by an oath to facrifice the firft Franc he should meet to the manes of his brother.

"All Europeans confined themselves to their homes for three whole months, in hope that the wrath of this man would fubfide. At the expiration of that period, and on information fufficient to set their minds at reft, they believed it safe to go abroad. For eight days they appeared as ufual, in the city and in the country, and no one had been in the least molested. The conful had not hitherto dared to fhew himself: at length he thought that he too might take the air, without running any rifk. He went to walk with a janifary of his guard on the bank of the canal. Unfortunately for him, the Arab who, with the fentiment of revenge carefully treasured up in his heart, went conftantly armed with a determination to gratify it, happened to be in the fame quarter. He approached the Frenchman, who was under no manner of apprehenfion, and daftardly as cruel, brought him down to the ground by a gunfhot fired through his back. The janifary, instead of taking vengeance on the affaffin, or at least of affifting the man whom it was his duty to protect, fled off as faft as his heels could carry him, and the unfortunate conful died of the wound a few hours after. The French merchants dispatched a fast failing boat to Conftantinople, to demand justice. The Ottoman Porte fent officers with ftrict and fevere orders on the subject; but these orders, at firft evaded, remained finally unexecuted.

The

The villain did not fo much as quit the city, but fhewed himfelf openly with impunity. The merchants were under the neceffity of concealing their refentments for the fake of their own fafety; and, befide the affront offered to the French nation by the unpunished affaffination of her delegate, the national commerce had to regret the expenditure of confiderable fums, fruitlessly laid out in demanding a just reparation.

"Events of this kind, unhappily, were not fufficiently rare to ensure the tranquillity of thofe who were obliged to live in Egypt, and in fome parts of Syria, where the people, befide their vicinity, have a confiderable refemblance to those of Egypt. Toward the end of October, 1731, the Dutch drogman or interpreter at Aleppo, was walking for amufement with his conful. The peafants of a village adjacent thought proper to accufe him of having occafioned the death of a young man who had drowned himself, and whofe body they were dragging out of the water. An accufation fo abfurd was fupported by the whole village. The cry for vengeance was univerfal. They fent a deputation to the Pacha of Aleppo, demanding that the Dutchman might be given up to them. The governor refused. The villagers ftirred up the populace of Aleppo. A formidable mob threatened to fet fire to the city, and to maffacre all the Francs, unless the drogman, who had filed for refuge to the Pacha's palace, was delivered up to them. That officer, though perfectly convinced of the Dutchman's innocence, was obliged, in order to prevent the moft dreadful out. rages, to order the ill-fated European to be ftrangled, and his body to be given to the mutineers, who hanged it up on a

tree.

"A wide extent of fand and duft, an accumulation of rubbish, was an abode worthy of the colony of Alexandria, and every day they were labouring hard to increase the horror of it. Columns fubverted and fcattered about; a few others ftill upright, but ifolated; mutilated ftatues, capitals, entablatures, fragments of every fpecies overfpread the ground with which it is furrounded. It is impoffible to advance a step, without kicking, if I may use the expreffion, against fome of thofe wrecks. It is the hideous theatre of deftruction the most hurrible. The foul is faddened, on contemplating thofe remains of grandeur and magnificence, and is roufed into indignationagainst the barbarians who dared to apply a facrilegious hand

to

to monuments which time, the moft pitilefs of devourers, would have respected.

Pompey's column is thus particularly noticed with peculiar vanity; it is indeed a wonderful fuperftructure, and it appears to have been the head-quarters whence BUONAPARTE iffued orders for the capture of Alexandria !

"As you go out of the enclosure of the Arabs, by the gate of the fouth, the eye is ftruck with one of the most aftonishing monuments which antiquity has tranfmitted to us. Proud of not having funk under the waftes of time, nor under the more prompt and terrible attacks of fuperftitious ignorance, rears its majeftic head, the grandeft column that ever existed. It is of the most beautiful and the hardeft granite, and is compofed of three pieces, out of which have been cut the capital, the fhaft and the pedeftal. I had not the means of measuring its height, and travellers who have gone before me are not perfectly agreed on this point. Savary affigns to it a height of a hundred and fourteen feet*, whereas Paul Lucas, who declares he had taken an accurate measurement of it, makes its height no more than ninety-four feet +. This laft opinion was generally adopted by the Europeans of Alexandria. height of the column was admitted there to be from ninetyfour to ninety-five feet of France. The pedestal is fifteen feet high; the shaft with the focle, seventy feet; finally, the capital, ten feet; in all, ninety-five feet. The mean diameter is feven feet nine inches. Admitting thefe proportions, the entire mafs of the column may be estimated at fix thousand cubic feet. It is well known that the cubic foot of red Egyptian granite, weighs a hundred and eighty-five pounds. The weight of the whole column, therefore, is one million one hundred and ten thousand pounds, eight ounces to the pound.

The

"However hard the fubftance of the column may be, it has not escaped the corroding tooth of time. The bottom of the fhaft is very much damaged on the eaft fide, and it is very eafy to feparate, on the fame fide, thin lamina from the pedef

* Letters on Egypt, vol. i. p. 36.

T Journey of Paul Lucas, in 1714, vol. ii. p. 22.

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tal. It has been already remarked, that the hieroglyphics of Cleopatra's needle were corroded on the face exposed to that point of the compafs. It is most probably the effect of the wind blowing from the fea. Some have pretended, that on the oppofite face, that to the weft, a Greek inscription was difcernible, when the fun bore upon it; but with all the attention I could employ, it was not in my power to perceive any thing of it.

"The ground on which the pillar is raised having given way, part of the pivot which fupports it has been laid open. It is a block of fix feet only in the fquare: it bears the weight, as a centre, of a pedestal much larger than itself; which proves the exact perpendicularity of the whole. It too is granite, but of a species different from that of the column. The people of the country had built round the pivot, in the view of ftrengthening the pedeftal. This piece of masonry, totally ufelefs, was formed of ftones of various qualities, among which fragments of marble, detached from the ruins of fome antique edifice, and sculptured with beautiful hieroglyphics, attracted notice. While fome were exerting themselves to prevent the falling of the monument, others, the Bedouins, as I was told, endeavoured to bring it down, in the hope of finding treasure under its base when burft to pieces. For this purpose they had employed the action of gunpowder; but very fortunately they had no great skill in the art of mining. The explosion only carried away a portion of the mafon-work, fo idly intended to be a prop to the pedestal.

"Paul Lucas relates, that in 1714, a mountebank having got upon the capital with a facility which aftonished every body, declared it was hollow a-top *. We have fome years ago indications more pofitive on the fubject. Some English failors contrived to get upon the fummit of the column, by means of a paper-kite, which affiited them in fixing a ladder of ropes: they found, as well as the man mentioned by Paul Lucas, a great round hollow in the middle of the capital, and moreover, a hole in each of the corners. It is therefore cer tain, this chapiter served as a bafe to fome ftatue, the fragments of whichfeem to beirrecoverably loft. Some friends of M.

*Journey of Paul Lucas, in 1714, vol. ii. p. 22.

Roboli,

Roboli, who had been French interpreter at Alexandria, have affured me that he had difcovered near the column, pieces of a ftatue which, to judge from the fragments, muft have been of a prodigious magnitude; that he had them conveyed to the houfe occupied by the French, but that, notwithstanding the moft diligent researches, not being able to procure the other pieces of it, he had ordered the first to be thrown into the fea, clofe by that fame houfe. They were fhewn to me, but it was impoffible for me to diftinguish any thing, for they are almoft entirely buried under the fand of the fea. I was farther informed, that those fragments of a statue, were of the most beautiful porphyry.

"We have nothing beyond conjecture, more or less fupported by evidence, refpecting the Era, and the motives which dictated the conftruction of the column of Alexandria. The name of Pompey's Column, by which it is generally designed, indicates the origin commonly afcribed to it. Cæfar, we are told, ordered it to be erected, to perpetuate the memory of the victory which he had gained over Pompey, in the celebrated battle of Pharfalia. Relying on the teftimony of an Arabian author, Savary pretends that it was a monument of the gra titude of the inhabitants of Alexandria to the Roman emperor, Alexander-Severus *. Finally, others afcribe the elevation of the Pillar to a king of Egypt, Ptolemeus-Euergetes.

"Mr. W. Montague, whom his extenfive erudition and fingular adventures have raised to celebrity, had formed, during his long refidence in the east, a new opinion on the fame fubject. He maintained that the column was the work of Adrian, another Roman emperor, who had travelled in Egypt. But he could adduce no proof in fupport of this affertion wishing, nevertheless, to give currency to his idea, he was under the neceffity, in the view of perfuading others of the truth of what he had perfuaded himself, to employ a little ingenious fraud. I have the fact from a witnefs of undoubted veracity. The fly Englishman had got one of his people to introduce a fmall coin of the emperor Adrian, in a spot agreed on, between the ground on which this pillar refts, and its fous-bafel He afterwards repaired to the place, attended by a numerous company, and, after affected researches, he dexterously un

* Letters on Egypt, vol. i. p. 37,

earthed

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