Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/235

Rh. He has on him a loose shirt, like what they wear at this day in Nubia (only it is not blue) with loose sleeves, and arms and neck bare. It seemed to be thick muslin, or cotton cloth, and long-ways through it is a crimson stripe about one-eighth of an inch broad; a proof, if this is Egyptian manufacture, that they understood at that time how to dye cotton, crimson, an art found out in Britain only a very few years ago. If this is the fabric of India, still it proves the antiquity of the commerce between the two countries, and the introduction of Indian manufactures into Egypt.

reached down to his ancle; his feet are without sandals; he seems to be a corpulent man, of about sixty years of age, and of a complexion rather dark for an Egyptian. To guess by the detail of the figure, the painter seems to have had the same degree of merit with a good sign-painter in Europe, at this day.—If we allow this harper's stature to be five feet ten inches, then we may compute the harp, in its extreme length, to be something less than six feet and a half.

instrument is of a much more advantageous form than the triangular Grecian harp. It has thirteen strings, but wants the forepiece of the frame opposite to the longest string. The back part is the sounding-board, composed of four thin pieces of wood, joined together in form of a cone, that is, growing wider towards the bottom; so that, as the length of the string increases, the square of the corresponding space in the sounding-board, in which the sound was to undulate, always increases in proportion. The whole principles, on which this harp is constructed, are rational and