RUINS OF JPHARAOH. ISl Mequinas and at Tafilelt ; but I was obliged to desist, seeing some persons of the sanctuary following the cavalcade. Pots and kettles of gold and silver coins are continually dug up from these ruins. The country, however, abounds in serpents, and we saw many scorpions under the stones that my conductor Deeb turned up.

These ruins are said by the Africans to have been built by one of the Pharaohs : they are called " Kasser Farawan* i. e. the ruins of Pharaoh.

" Here begins the territory of the <* In reply to those learned sceptics who have studied books ; but not men, and the manners of different countries ; who believe nothing but what they have seen ; and who say that Pharaoh never came so far west ; I reply, that our knowledge of African history is extremely imperfect. In fact, we now know as certainties, various articles of which no record is to be found in any ancient writer ; for the affairs of Africa, which, of late, have so deservedly excited the attention of the learned, were as little known to the ancients as they are to the moderns ; insomuch that not a word is to be found in anyjancient record or history extant, of those curious astronomical representations, the Zodiacs, which adorn the cielings of the temples in Egypty nor of the paintings which cover the silent and solemn repositories of their dead. Even the royal sepulchres, surpassing all the efforts of art hitherto known, in brilliancy of colours and decorative sculptures, are recorded by no historian ! Neither in any history, knoijon, to Europe is there any allusion to the Egyptian custom of placing books, i. e. rolls of manuscript, in the mummy coffins with the bodies of the deceased. For much of the knowledge collected respecting Africa, we are indebted to the catacombs of Egypt, and we must not hope to know much more,whilst our ignorance of the Arabic language is so manifest; we must travel far out ofthe precincts of Greek andLatin lore, before we shall procure correct histories of African