7 



122 TRAVELS IN UPPER 



powder ; but very fortunately they had no great 

 skill in the art of mining. The explosion only car- 

 ried away a portion of the mason-work so idly in- 

 tended to be a prop to the pedestal. 



Paul Lucas relates, that in 1714, a mountebank 

 having got upon the capital with a facility which 

 astonished every body, declared it was hollow at 

 top *. We have some years ago indications more 

 positive on the subject. Some English sailors con^ 

 trived to get upon the summit of the column, by 

 means of a paper-kite, which assisted them in fixing 

 a ladder of ropes : they found, as well as the man 

 mentioned by Paul Lucas, a great round hollow in 

 the middle of the capital, and moreover, a hole in 

 each of the corners. It is therefore certain, that 

 this chapiter served as a base to some statue, the 

 fragments of which seem to be irrecoverably lost. 

 Some friends of M. Roboli, who had been French 

 interpreter at Alexandria, have assured me that he 

 had discovered near the column, pieces of a statue 

 which, to judge from the fragments, must have 

 been of a prodigious magnitude : that he had them 

 conveyed to the house occupied by the French, 

 but that, notwithstanding the most diligent re- 

 searches, not being able to procure the other pieces 

 of it, he had ordered the first to be thrown into the 

 sea, close by that same house. They were shewn 

 ^Journey of Paul Lucas, in 1714, vol. K, p. 22. 



to 



