The soil, wherever a vegetable mould is discoverable, is light, and favourable to any kind of culture; but it has apparently been brought there for the purpose, as the natural soil seems wholly unfit for cultivation, being throughout either sand or stone. The orange and lemon are found in the gardens here, but not in great quantities. The dates are good, though not of the most esteemed kind. Yet they are found the most profitable article that the owner of the ground can cultivate. And accordingly these trees, with which the gardens are filled, not only relieve the eye from the dry whiteness of buildings, and the sandy soil; but well repay the owners for the trouble required to manage them, and for the space they occupy to the exclusion of almost every thing else. The greater number of esculent herbs, or roots, that are common among us, may be raised here, without any other difficulty than that of watering. The fruit trees that I have remarked as peculiar to the place, are the nebbek (_Paliurus Athenæi_) and the kishné (_Cassia Keshta_,) the latter of which is also found in the West Indies. The former bears a small fruit like the cherry in size, and having a stone of the same kind; but very different in colour and flavour, which more resemble those of the apple. The chief monuments of antiquity remaining in any degree perfect, are the column, usually but improperly termed of Pompey[2], and the obelisk. On the former, not even so much of the inscription as Pococke copied is now to be distinguished. There is also a sarcophagus or chest of serpentine marble in the great mosque, which is used for a cistern. It is of the same kind with that so minutely described by Niebuhr, at Kallaat el Kabsh in Kahira, and seems to be almost as rich in hieroglyphics. It has the additional advantage of being entire, and little if at all injured by time. It is said, that one of those who farmed the customs some years since, on retiring from Egypt, had negociated for the removal of this precious monument of antiquity, on board of an European vessel, with the intention of carrying it as a present to the Emperor of Germany. On the night when it was to be embarked, however, the secret being disclosed, the citizens clamorously insisted that the property of the mosque was inviolable. The projected removal was accordingly relinquished, and the chest has ever since been watched with uncommon vigilance, so that it is now difficult for an European even to obtain a sight of it; which must be my excuse for not having been more minute in my description of a monument that seems not to have been particularly observed by former travellers.