THE RUINS OF OLD DONGOLA. 445 some old Egyptian ruin. The floors are covered with tiles of burnt brick, but the palm-logs which support them have given away in many places, rendering one's footing insecure. Behind the hall of audience is a passage, with a niche, in each side of which is also an ancient pillar of granite. From the tenor of one of the Arabic inscriptions, it appears that the building was originally designed for a mosque, and that it was erected in the year 1317, by Saf-ed-deen Abdallah, after a victory over the infidels.

I ascended to the roof of the palace, which is flat and paved with stones. The view was most remarkable. The height on which Old Dongola is built, falls off on all sides, inland as well as towards the river, so that to the east one overlooks a wide extent of desert — low hills of red sand, stretching away to a dim, hot horizon. To the north, the hill slopes gradually to the Nile, covered with the ruins of old buildings. Northeast, hardly visible through the sandy haze, rose a high, isolated peak, with something like a tower on its summit. To the south and east the dilapidated city covered the top of the hill — a mass of ashy-gray walls of mud and stone, for the most part roofless and broken down, while the doors, courts and alleys between them were half choked up with the loose sand blown in from the Desert. The graveyards of the former inhabitants extended for more than a mile through the sand, over the dreary hills behind the town. Among them were a great number of conical, pointed structures of clay and stones, from twenty to thirty feet in height. The camel-men said they were the tombs of rossool — prophets, or holy men. I counted twenty-five in that portion of the cemetery which was risible. The whole view was one of entire and absolute deso-