Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/294

186 of a hammer; but the works of old times were more apparent in it, than in any mountain we had seen. Ducts, or channels, for carrying water transversely, were observed evidently to terminate in this quarry of jasper: a proof that water was one of the means used in cutting these hard stones.

ten o'clock, descending very rapidly, with green marble and jasper on each side of us, but no other green thing whatever, we had the first prospect of the Red Sea, and, at a quarter past eleven, we arrived at Cosseir. It has been a wonder with all travellers, and with myself among the rest, where the ancients procured that prodigious quantity of fine marble, with which all their buildings abound. That wonder, however, among many others, now ceases, after having passed, in four days, more granite, porphyry, marble, and jasper, 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 that whole mountains had been cut out at these places, to preserve a slope 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 excursion to these marble mountains from Cosseir, I will, once for all, here set down what I observed concerning their natural appearance.