l88 TRAVELS IjST UPPER. 



tion, one should content himself with writing down 

 the letters, without order and without connexion. 

 Nevertheless, it is only by copying, with scrupulous 

 accuracy, the figures of this symbolical language, 

 that we can attain the knowledge of a mysterious 

 composition, on which depends that of the history 

 of a country once so celebrated. When that lan- 

 guage shall be understood, we may perhaps learn 

 the origin of the sarcophagus, and the history of 

 the puissant man whose spoils it contained. Till 

 then it is but the vague and flitting field of con- 

 jecture. 



By the side of the coffin, on a piece of gray 

 marble, of which the pavement of the mosque is 

 composed, I perceived a Greek inscription, but in 

 Roman characters : as they were in a great mea- 

 sure obliterated, it must have required more time 

 than we could spare to decipher them. All I was 

 able to distinguish, at the first glance, was the 

 word CONSTANTINON. 



It was formerly impossible to procure admission 

 into this mosque, and this accounts for the silence 

 of travellers on the subject of the sepulchre which 

 renders it so interesting. A duke of Braganza was 

 the first European who visited it, or rather who 

 discovered it, for chance merely led to the disco- 

 very. He happened to be passing by the temple ; 



the 



