365 
This increase is the same throughout the whole desert 
that surrounds the city, and appears to have been pro- 
duced by the same cause. 
The remains of the ancient edifices, built with ..stone, 
serve as quarries to the inhabitants of the new city, who 
dig up out of the sand the materials wherewith they con- 
struct their houses. The whole of this space is under- 
mined with cisterns. There are some very magnificent 
ones, which are adorned with several orders of columns, 
supporting arches one upon another. There was for- 
merly to be seen a mosque, which was called the 
mosque with a thousand columns. 
A great number of columns, extracted from these 
ruins, had been brought at different periods to the sea- 
shore by Europeans, to be afterwards embarked by 
them for their own country; but one day a Turkish 
fleet being in the port, the captains who commanded it, 
angry at not finding a convenient landing-place, ordered 
the whole of them to be thrown into the sea, so as to be 
piled upon each other. By these means they found in a 
moment a saiall pier or landing-place, composed of 
these precious remains, which now, covered with earth 
and sand, are a second time buried, and lost to the ad- 
miration of man. This landing-place, the only one 
of the kind, is situated in the western port. The 
obelisks, called likewise the needles of Cleopatra, 
are situated upon the eastern extremity of the eastern 
port, and near a large tower, which is called the round 
tower. They are two in number, one is standing, the 
other is overturned; both are of red granite, and covered 
with hieroglyphics in very good preservation, upon some 
of their sides, but almost entirely effaced upon the 
