126 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



and my guides, cither from a natural impatience and diftafte 

 that thefe people have at fuch employments, or, that their 

 fears of the banditti that live in the caverns of the moun- 

 tains were real, importuned me to return to the boat, even 

 before I had begun my fearch, or got into the mountains 

 where are the many large apartments of which I was in 

 quell. 



In the firft one of thefe I entered is the prodigious far- 

 cophagus, fome fay of Menes, others of Ofimandyas ; pof- 

 fibly of neither. It is fixteen feet high, ten long, and fix 

 broad, of one piece of red-granite ; and, as fuch, is, I fuppofe, 

 the fmeft vafe in the world. Its cover is ftill upon it, (bro- 

 ken on one fide,) and it has a figure in relief on the outlide. 

 It is not probably the tomb of Ofimandyas, becaufe, Diodo- 

 rus * fays, that it was ten ftadia from the tomb of the kings ; 

 whereas this is one among them. 



There have been fome ornaments at the outer-pillars, or 

 outer-entry, which have been broken and thrown down. 

 Thence you dcfcend through an inclined paffage, I fuppofe, 

 about twenty feet broad ; I fpeak only by guefs, for I did 

 not meafure. The fide-walls, as well as the roof of this paf- 

 fage, are covered with a coat of ftucco, of a finer and more 

 equal grain, or furfacc, than any I ever faw in Europe. I 

 found my black-lead pencil little more worn by it than by 

 writing upon paper. 



Upon 



* Diod, Sic. lib. I, 



