44

MINES OF

CIIAP. II.

of time ; the remains of ancient Egyptian build-ings on the road to the spot show that the periodof their working must have been very remote.It is highly probable they were productiveuntil the end of the sovereignty of the Pha-raohs ; and, according to Theophrastus 1 , theproduce was the property of the monarchs, asthey will be of the present pacha of Egypt ,if the attempts he is reported to be making toopen these mines anew should be attended withsuccess. An Arabian author, Massudi, quotedby Quatremere, calls the place Kharbal, and says,it is in a mountainous desert, eight days’ jour-ney from the Nile ; and that some mines wereworked near that place till the fourteenth or fif-teenth century. If this last assertion be correct,it may not be too much to suppose that the dis-covery of the mines of America might have ex-tended their influence so far as to make the work-ing of these Nubian mines an unprofitable opera-tion. It is however probable, that if these mineswere continued to the late period noticed by theArabian writer, the operations must have beencarried on upon a very contracted scale.

We may find in the history of that countrysufficient causes, in the sufferings inflicted on itby civil dissensions and by foreign invasions, toaccount for the abandonment of a pursuit so little

1 Theophrastus do Lapidibus.