GRAND CAIRO. 125 
been thus copied; and these copies may defy chap. 
the attacks to which the originals were hable, . ^"' _. 
while they preserve all their perfections. Mi- 
niature painting of the most exquisite colouring 
has also been executed in the same manner; the 
artist using vitrified tesserce of different hues, 
instead of liquid colours. The gilded tesserce 
which we procured from the Mosaic of Saladines 
palace, resembles, in size and appearance, those 
of the Mosaics which invest the domes of 
buildings in Ro7?ie, Ravenna, Milan, Fenice, and 
Constantinople; all of these were the works of 
Grecian artists, as the inscriptions yet remaining 
imply. Each tessera is a cube of glass, of the 
size of our common playing dice, traversed by 
thin film of gold, in such a manner that the gold 
leaf does not lie coating the exterior surface, 
but appears through a vitrified superficies. 
One of the marvels of Es:vpt, in former times, Joseph 
^•^^ Well. 
was the fountain belonging to the Citadel, called 
''Joseph's Well;' but since the country has been 
accessible to enlightened travellers, it is no 
longer considered as any thing extraordinary^ . 
(3) It is not, in fact, the only work of the kind in the neighbour- 
hood of Cairo. The Consul MaiUet found five other wells, of the same 
nature, in the ruins of old Cairo. " J'en ai deconvert cinq h-peu-pr^s 
semblables 
