THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 44/ 



beauty, health, and pleafure of Saba. This is built with 

 large maffy blocks of marble, brought from the neighbour- 

 ing mountains, placed upon one another without lime or 

 cement, but joined with thick cramps, or bars of brafs. 

 There are likewife a number of wells, not fix feet wide, cora- 

 pofed of pieces of marble hewn to parts of a circle, and 

 joined with the fame bars of brafs alfo. This is exceedingly 

 furpriiing, for Agatharcides * tells us, that the Alileans and 

 CafTandrins, in the fouthern parts of Arabia, (juftoppofite to 

 Azab), had among them gold in fuch plenty, that they would 

 give double the weight of gold for iron, triple its weight 

 for brafs, and ten times its weight for filver ; that, in dig- 

 ging the earth, they found pieces of gold as big as olive- 

 Itones, but others much larger. 



This feems to me extraordinary, if brafs was at fuch a 

 price in Arabia, that it could be here employed in the mean- 

 eil and moll common ufcs. However this be, the inhabitants 

 of the Continent, and of the peninfula of Arabia oppofite to it» 

 of all denominations agree, that this was the royal feat of the 

 Queen of Saba, famous in ecclefiaftical hiftory for her journey 

 to Jerufalem ; that thefe works belonged to her, and were 

 erected at the place of her refidence ; that all the gold, filver, 

 and perfumes came from her kingdom of Sofala, which was 

 Ophir, and which reached from thence to Azab, upon the 

 borders of the Red Sea, along the coafl of the Indian Ocean. 



It will very poffibly be thought, that this is the pl;ice in 

 which I fhould mention the journey that the Queen of Saba 

 made into Paleiline ; but as the dignity of the expedition it- 



4 felf, 



* Agath. p, Co. 



J 



