Travels and discoveries in North and Central Africa : $b Including accounts of Tripoli, the Sahara, the remarkable kingdom of Bornu, and the countries around Lake ChadBarth, Heinrich
History
Travels and discoveries in North and Central Africa : $b Including accounts of Tripoli, the Sahara, the remarkable kingdom of Bornu, and the countries around Lake Chad
Barth, Heinrich
Africa, Central -- Description and travel; Africa, North -- Description and travel
The front of the monument faces the south with ten degrees of deviation
towards the west. The whole body of the building, rising upon a base
of three steps, measures 47 ft. 6 in. in length, and 31 ft. 4 in. in
breadth. The entrance or portal, equidistant from both corners, was 12
ft. 6 in. wide; but it has been entirely blocked up with hewn stone,
so that it is now impossible to get into the interior of the monument
without great labour, and only a glimpse can be obtained of a kind
of entrance-hall of small dimensions. Of the interior arrangement,
therefore, nothing meets the view; but on the top of the solid mass of
building, rising to a height of 28 ft. 10 in., the ground-plan of the
third story, which has been demolished to obtain materials for closing
the entrance is distinctly visible. Here the vestibule measures 10 ft.
10 in., the wall of the interior chamber or cell being adorned with
two columns, which are no less than 3 ft. 10 in. apart: the inner room
itself measures 22 ft. 4 in. in length within the walls. The monument,
although more massive than beautiful, is a fair proof of the wealth of
this district in ancient times. Opposite to it, on a limestone hill of
considerable elevation, is another specimen of the cromlech kind in good
preservation, besides other ruins. In the hollow at the south-east side
of the sepulchre there are six deep and spacious wells sunk in the rock.
Here my companion left me, and I continued my route alone, passing
through a well-cultivated tract, till I reached an encampment of the
Welád Bu-Séllem, where we pitched our tent. Here I met a cousin of Haj
ʿAbd el Hádi el Meráyet, who had once been master of half the Tarhóna
district, but was made prisoner by the Turks, and sent to Constantinople.
This man also reappeared on the stage last year.
We set out early in the morning, the country continuing flat as far
as the chapel of Sidi ʿAli ben Salah, which, standing on a hill, is a
conspicuous object for many miles round. At a short distance from this
chapel, I observed the ruins of a castle built of large square stones
taken from older buildings; it measures 42 ft. in every direction, and
exhibits a few bad but curious sculptures, among others an ass in relief.
Around are the ruins of a small village, and flat stones of immense size,
similar in workmanship to those described above, but no upright pillars.
[Illustration]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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