beauty, health, and pleasure of Saba. This is built with large massy blocks of marble, brought from the neighbouring mountains, placed upon one another without lime or cement, but joined with thick cramps, or bars of brass. There are likewise a number of wells, not six feet wide, composed of pieces of marble hewn to parts of a circle, and joined with the same bars of brass also. This is exceedingly surprising, for Agatharcides *[1] tells us, that the Alileans and Cassandrins, in the southern parts of Arabia, (just oppofite to Azab), had among them gold in such plenty, that they would give double the weight of gold for iron, triple its weight
for brass, and ten times its weight for silver; that, in digging the earth, they found pieces of gold as big as olive-stones, but others much larger.
This seems to me extraordinary, if brass was at such a price in Arabia, that it could be here employed in the meanest and most common uses. However this be, the inhabitants of the Continent, and of the peninsula of Arabia opposite to it, of all denominations agree, that this was the royal seat of the Queen of Saba, famous in ecclesiastical history for her journey to Jerusalem; that these works belonged to her, and were erected at the place of her residence; that all the gold, silver, and perfumes came from her kingdom of Sofala, which was Ophir, and which reached from thence to Azab, upon the borders of the Red Sea, along the coast of the Indian Ocean.
It will very possibly be thought, that this is the place in which I should mention the journey that the Queen of Saba made into Palestine; but as the dignity of the expedition it-
- ↑ * Agath. p. 60.
- Agath. p. 60.
