124 TRAVELS IN UPPER 



Egypt. But he could adduce no proof in support 

 of this assertion : wishing, nevertheless, to give cur- 

 rency to his idea, he was under the necessity, in the 

 view of persuading others of the truth of what he 

 had persuaded himself, to employ a little ingenious 

 fraud. I have the fact from a witness of undoubted 

 veracity. The sly Englishman had got one of his 

 people to introduce a small coin of the emperor 

 Adrian, in a spot agreed on, between the ground 

 on which this pillar rests, and its sous-base. He 

 afterwards repaired to the place, attended by a nu- 

 merous company, and, after affected researches, he 

 dextrously unearthed the coin with the blade of a 

 knife, and ostentatiously displayed it as an incon- 

 testable proof of the truth of his position. He sent 

 an account of the discovery to his own country, 

 where it did not meet with much credit, and indeed 

 hardly could, with persons who knew the column. 

 The Greeks, it is true, from the time of Adrian, had 

 diffused over Egypt the principles of a beautiful 

 architecture, and of elegance in all the arts. A 

 judgment may be formed of this from the remains 

 of the city which that very emperor had caused to 

 be built in the upper part of that country, in ho- 

 nour of Antinous, a young man celebrated in an- 

 cient history for his extraordinary beauty of person, 

 and his generous devotedness to a Roman who has 

 been more cried up than he deserves. The columns 

 which still subsist at Anlinoe are cut with greater 



delicacy, 



