Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/57

Rh walls and gates of which city are still entire. There is a prodigious number of Greek inscriptions, but there remain only a few columns of the portico, and an Ionic temple, in the first manner of executing that order; and therefore, slight as the remains are, they are treasures in the history of architecture which are worthy to be preserved. These are in the King's collection, with all the parts that could be recovered.

I met a small Greek junk belonging to Lampedosa, a little island near Crete, which had been unloading corn, and was now ready to sail. At the same time the Arabs of Ptolometa told me, that the Welled Ali, a powerful tribe that occupy the whole country between that place and Alexandria, were at war among themselves, and had plundered the caravan of Morocco, of which I have already spoken, and that the pilgrims composing it had mostly perished, having been scattered in the desert without water; that a great famine had been at Derna, the neighbouring town, to which I intended to go; that a plague had followed, and the town, which is divided into upper and lower, was engaged in a civil war. This torrent of ill news was irresistible, and was of a kind I did not propose to wrestle with; besides, there was nothing, as far as I knew, that merited the risk. I resolved, therefore, to fly from this inhospitable coast, and save to the public, at least, that knowledge and entertainment I had acquired for them.

on board the Greek vessel, very ill accoutred, as we afterwards found, and, though it had plenty of sail, it had not an ounce of ballast. A number of people, men, women, and children, flying from the calamities which at- Vol I.