The simple sounds which issued from the statue were, in the progress of time, magnified into intelligible words, and even into an oracle of seven verses, and this prodigy has been recorded in a Greek inscription on the left leg of the statue. But though this new faculty of the colossus was evidently the contrivance of the Egyptian priests, yet we are not entitled from this to call in question the simple and perfectly credible fact that it emitted sounds. This property, indeed, it seems to possess at the present day; for we learn,[29] that an English traveller, Sir A. Smith, accompanied with a numerous escort, examined the statue, and that at six o’clock in the morning he heard very distinctly the sounds which had been so celebrated in antiquity. He asserts that this sound does not proceed from the statue, but from the pedestal; and he expresses his belief that it arises from the impulse of the air upon the stones of the pedestal, which are arranged so as to produce this surprising effect. This singular description is, to a certain extent, confirmed by the description of Strabo, who says, that he was quite certain that he heard a sound which proceeded either _from the base_, or from the colossus, or from some one of the assistants. As there were no Egyptian priests in the escort of Sir A. Smith, we may now safely reject this last, and, for many centuries, the most probable hypothesis. [29] _Revue Encyclopédique_, 1821, tome ix., p. 592. The explanation suggested by Sir A. Smith had been previously given in a more specific form by M. Dussaulx, the translator of Juvenal. “The statue,” says he, “being hollow, the heat of the sun heated the air which it contained, and this air, issuing at some crevice, produced the sounds of which the priests gave their own interpretation.”