According to Sonnini, columns subverted and scattered about; a few others still upright but isolated; mutilated statues, fragments of every species, overspread the ground which it once occupied. "It is impossible to advance a step, without kicking, if I may use the expression, against some of its wrecks. It is the hideous theatre of destruction the most horrible. The soul is saddened on contemplating those remains of grandeur and magnificence; and it is raised into indignation against the barbarians, who dared to apply a sacrilegious hand to monuments, which time, the most pitiless of destroyers, would have respected." "So little," says Dr. Clarke, "are we acquainted with these valuable remains, that not a single excursion for purposes of discovery has yet been begun; nor is there any thing published with regard to its modern history, excepting the observations that have resulted from the hasty survey, made of its forlorn and desolated havens by a few travellers whose transitory visits ended almost with the days of their arrival[23]." "On arriving at Alexandria," says Mr. Wilkinson, "the traveller naturally enquires where are the remains of that splendid city, which was second only to Rome itself, and whose circuit of fifteen miles contained a population of three hundred thousand inhabitants and an equal number of slaves; and where the monuments of its former greatness? He has heard of Cleopatra's Needle and Pompey's Pillar, from the days of his childhood, and the fame of its library, the Pharos, the temple of Serapis and of those philosophers and mathematicians, whose venerable names contribute to the fame of Alexandria, even more than the extent of its commerce or the splendour of the monuments, that once adorned it, are fresh in his recollection;--and he is surprised, in traversing mounds which mark the site of this vast city, merely to find scattered fragments or a few isolated columns, and here and there the vestiges of buildings, or the doubtful direction of some of the main streets." Though the ancient boundaries, however, cannot be determined, heaps of rubbish are on all sides visible; whence every shower of rain, not to mention the industry of the natives in digging, discovers pieces of precious marble, and sometimes ancient coins, and fragments of sculpture. Among the last may be particularly mentioned the statues of Marcus Aurelius and Septimius Severus.