The Classical Journal

ceeded from the snow dissolving in those mountains: of which Anaxagoras and Eschylus, thus also expressed by Euripides,

The goodly streams of Nilus leaving,

Which from the land of Negroes flow:
Their inundations receiving,

From thaws of Ethiopian snow.

But the excessive heat of those climates, the stones there burning hot, and earth not by day to be trod upon, confute sufficiently that error. Thales attributes it unto the Northern winds, which then blowing up the river, resist the current, and force the reverberated streams to retire: so' that not increased, but prohibited, at length, it descendeth with such a multitude of waters.-To prove that it proceedeth from a natural cause; this one, though strange, yet true experiment will suffice. Take of the earth of Egypt, adjoyning to the river, and preserve it carefully, that it neither come to be wet nor wasted: weigh it daily, and you shall find it neither more nor less heavy until the 17th of June, at which day it beginneth to grow more ponderous, and augmenteth with the augmentation of the river: whereby they have an infallible knowledge of the state of the deluge, proceeding without doubt from the humidity of the air, which having a recourse through all passable places, and mixing therewith, increaseth the same as it increaseth in moisture. In the tenth and eleventh year of Cleopatra, it is by writers of those times for a certainty affirmed, that the Nilus increased not, which two years' defect prognosticated the fall of two great potentates, Cleopatra and Anthony. Many ages before Callimachus reports, that it did the like for nine years together. For the same cause, no question, but that 7 years' dearth proceeded in the time of Pharaoh. P. 76-77.2

At 80. there is a short notice of the papyrus: "Omit I must not the sedgie reeds that grow in the marishes of Egypt, called formerly Papyri, of which they make paper, and whereof ours made of rags, assumeth that name. They divided it into thin flakes, whereinto it naturally parteth: then laying them together on a table, and moistening them with the glutinous water of the river, they prest them together, and so dried them in the sun." On the second of February, 1610-11, they began an overland journey to Cairo, and passed through a desert producing the weed termed Kali, which being burnt, and the ashes pounded, was mixed with a stone brought from the Ticin in Pavia, and used in making Venice-glass. From thence they went to see the Pyramids, concerning which he makes a curious

Note by Sandys. "A vulgar experiment generally affirmed, as by Alpinus in Med. Egypt. 1. iv. c. 8. who long lived here upon the testimony of Paulus Marcitus the French consul, Baptista Elianus a Jesuit, and John Varot an Englishman."

2 He supposes Providence to be expressed by the figure of a crocodile, because that animal contrives to avoid the inconveniences, while he enjoys the benefits, of the Nile. P. 78.

conjecture, viz. that they were "hewn out of the Trojan mountains far off in Arabia, so called of captive Trojans brought by Menelaus unto Egypt, and there afterward planted." Sandys entered the great pyramid, and has given a particular description of its passages: he mentions likewise a report that King Amasis was buried under the Sphinx.'

On the 4th of March the caravan quitted Cairo, and proceeded by Bilbesh in the land of Goshen, toward Mount Cassius, where he places the grave of Pompey; and on the 10th entered the main desert, being part of Arabia Petræa, so called from Petra, now Rathalalah, its principal town. His picture of the wandering Arabs is well drawn: in opposition, perhaps, to some' fanciful writers who derived the Saracens from Sarah the wife of Abraham, he traces their name to Sara, a desert, and Saken, to inhabit.

The journey through the Holy Land is circumstantially related, the writer's passion for identifying acting with the effect of a microscope. He supposes Joppa, with St. Jerome, to have been the scene of the exposure of Andromeda, and mentions that the inhabitants preserved several altars, inscribed with the names of Cepheus and Phineus. Marcus Scaurus, during his ædileship, brought from thence some bones of an enormous size, which were asserted to be those of the monster. A view of Jerusalem is given, and the approach corresponds with the sketch of a celebrated visit exhibited in 1820. The following epitaphs record the burial of Godfrey of Bulloign and his brother Baldwin, in the temple of the sepulchre.

Hic jacet inclytus Godefridus de Buglion, qui totam istam terram acquisivit cultui Christiano, cujus anima requiescat in pacem. Amen. Rex Baldwinus, Judas alter Machabeus,

Spes patriæ, vigor Ecclesiæ, virtus utriusque :
Quam formidabant qui dona tributa ferebant,
Cæsar [et], Egypti Dan, ac homicida Damascus,
Proh dolor! in modico clauditur hoc tumulo.

On Easter Monday they went to Emaus, of which visit he remarks, that the guides "endeavoured to bring all remarkable

There appear to be some reasons for supposing that the tomb discovered by G. Belzoni contained the relics of Amasis, and not of Psammis, as was at first imagined.

2 Probably forgeries, like the inscription of "date obolum Belisario," lately discovered in an obscure street at Rome.

places within the compass of their processions," a fault we have found in himself. A reference to the Scripture-geographies will be more serviceable to our readers than extracts from this part of the tour.-One of his allegories deserves notice: speaking of Byblis near Tripoli, the seat of Cinyras, he observes that Adonis is a type of the sun, as the Boar is of winter, "whereby his heat is extinguished, and desolate Venus (the Earth) doth mourn for his absence." After cruising on that coast for some days, they set sail for England on the 1st of May.

His return is so far interesting, as a few classical illustrations may be gleaned from his notes. The metamorphosis of the Cyprians into oxen appears to originate in certain tumors that grew on their foreheads. At Crete he saw a passage which the inhabitants showed for the Labyrinth, but it bore every mark of an excavated quarry: the celebrated maze did not exist in the time of Pliny. The dogs of Scylla he reduces to some little sharp rocks, frequented by fishes of prey; but the danger had ceased, the current no longer setting upon that treacherous alto relievo. Charybdis is an eddy formed by several streams. "It is odd," he says, "that the proverbial verse,

Incidit in Scyllam qui vult vitare Charybdim, should have obtained, since they are 12 miles distant from each other."

The scenery of Italy is now so familiar to most persons, that to follow our traveller through that part of his journey would be tiresome. The narrative concludes with his return to Venice. Those who wish for information in such parts of the East as he did not visit, will find Herbert's book instructive and entertaining.

Sandys printed his travels in 1615, without the engravings which adorn subsequent editions: an abridgement was drawn up by Purchas for his Pilgrimes, without prejudicing the original, as Justin's epitome of Trogus is said to have done. The merit of his work, and the novelty of his plan (for few tourists were so well-read or so enthusiastic in classical subjects), procured him esteem, and occasioned a demand for his book, of which seven impressions appeared in sixty years, a greater demand than even Shakspeare obtained, while the pages of contemporary authors

'The story of Gresham and the rich Antonio is told at p. 194. Being addressed on the subject of magic in Calabria, he answered, "that in England we were at defiance with the devil, and that he would do nothing for us."

were filled with testimonies to its excellence. He published afterwards several volumes of poetry, particularly a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses (which the tame and inelegant versions of Garth and Sewell have not superseded), with a profusion of notes, enriched by the learning accumulated in his travels. He died in 1643 at Boxley Abbey in Kent, where his burial is thus entered in the parish-register: "Georgius Sandys, Poetarum Anglorum sui sæculi facile princeps, sepultus fuit Martii 7. stilo Anglic. an. dom. 1643." Such memorials, however, were common in that age. The Travels well deserve to be reprinted (with corrections and additions from later observation), for they form a body of research alike adapted to the commentator and historian.

A LIST OF

Some of the earliest Editions of the CLASSIC AUTHORS,

from 1465 to 1500.

AULUS Gellius

Ausonii Epigrammata

Aristoteles de Moribus Lat.

Rom. 1469

Ven. 1472

Lovaine 1475

Aristotelis Opera quædam Logica. Lat. Fol. Paris 1478

Aristoteles et Theophrastus, 6 Vol.

Aristotelis Organum