[Footnote 10: As we repassed the same plain in July, many heaps of corn and barley were collected in various parts of it, and the greater part of the verdure had disappeared. We found the oxen of the place very busily employed in treading out the grain, in the good old-fashioned way practised before the invention of flails; while the Arabs, availing themselves of a little breeze of wind, were occupied in tossing up the grain into the air which had been already trodden out, in order to separate it from the husks, after the manner often alluded to in Scripture. Among other instances of this allusion, we may mention the fragments of Nebuchadnezzar’s image, which are compared in Daniel (ii. 25.) to “the chaff of the summer threshing-floor carried away by the wind.”] [Footnote 11: The practice of excavating tombs in the neighbourhood of ancient cities, in the quarries from which the stone was procured for building them, is very general in this part of Africa, and was probably first adopted from its convenience; little more being necessary than to shape the excavated spaces to the size and form required after the stone had been extracted for architectural purposes.] [Footnote 12: De Aedificiis.] [Footnote 13: The water is also too deep to admit of one, and becomes so on a sudden within a few feet of the beach.] [Footnote 14: A further description of the Harbour and Cothon will be found, with other details of Ptolemeta, at the end of the chapter.] [Footnote 15: See the plan of these in the plate prefixed to page 367. The columns are given in the vignette at the beginning of this chapter.] [Footnote 16: The inscriptions will be found in the plate prefixed to Chapter 14.] [Footnote 17: After sowing the corn, the Arabs leave it to enjoy the advantages of the winter rains, and never return to it till it comes to maturity and is ready to be cut and carried away.] CHAPTER XIII. OBSERVATIONS ON THE CITIES OF TEUCHIRA AND PTOLEMETA.