704 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



each peek than the Samian peek ; fo that if, to 20 peeks oT 

 Seide, you add twenty times four inches, which is 80, the 

 difference of the two peeks, when divided by 18, gives four, 

 which, added to the 20 peeks on the column, make 24 peeks, 

 the number fought. Secondly, That this obfervation in the 

 Han el Mohaderat fufficiently confirms what I have faid 

 both of the length of the column and length of the peek ; 

 that the former is 20 peeks in height, and that the meafure, 

 by which this is afcertained, is the peek El Belledy of 22 

 inches, as it appears on the brafs rod, four inches longer 

 than the Samian peek, and confequently is not the peek of 

 Stambouline, nor any foreign meafune whatever. 



A traveller thinks he has attained to a great deal of 

 precifion, when, obferving 18 peeks on the higheft diviiion 

 of the column from its bafe, or bottom of the well, he finds 

 it 37 feet ; he divides this by 18, and the quotient is 24 

 inches; when he mould divide it by 20, and the anfwer 

 would be 22 and a fraction, the true content of the peek 

 El Belledy, 01 peek of the Mikeas. This erroneous divifion 

 of his he calls the peek of the Mikeas ; and comparing it 

 with what authors, lefs informed than himfelf, have faid, 

 he names the Stambouline peek, and then the black peek, 

 when it really is his own peek, the creature of his own er- 

 ror or inadvertence ; but, as he does not know this, it is 

 handed down from traveller to traveller, till unfortunately 

 it is adopted by fome man of reputation, and it then be- 

 comes, as in this cafe, a fort of literary crime to any man, 

 from the authority of his own eyes and hands, to difpute it. 



TVIr 



