120 FAVOURABLE RECEPTION AT THE SANCTUARY.

this extraordinary circumstance, persons who have visited this country, and have remarked the rancour that generally exists with the lower orders against Christians, may doubt my veracity, so unprecedented a circumstance it is for a Christian to be admitted into a Horem ! the most respected also and the most sacred in the empire ! My answer to such is, that the circumstance is so incredible, that 1 should not have presumed to lay it before the British public, if I had not two most respectable witnesses, now living in West Barbary, who can and will corroborate my report ; these two men are Bel Hage, a Muselman, who had been the prince's cook, and who officiated as mine during the journey, and Muhamed, commonly called Deeb, ofDiabet, a village near Mogodor, the same man whose dexterity Aly Bey, in his travels, alludes to, when he shot a fish in the river near Mogodor.

Half an hour's journey after leaving the sanctuary of Muley Dris Zerone, and at the foot of Atlas, I perceived to the left of the road magnificent and massive ruins ; the country for miles around is covered with broken columns of white marble, the ruins appeared to be of the Egyptian, and massive style of architecture. There were still standing two porticos, about thirty feet high and twelve feet wide, the top of which was one entire stone. I attempted to take a view of these immense ruins, which have furnished marble for the imperial palaces at