ARCHBISHOP'S PALACE AND CATHEDRAL.

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thousand loads for the naval arsenal. Rafts are formed of the squared timber, and floated down the Wad el Quiber to its embouchure at Tabarca.

Within the town is a spring that throws up several tons of water every minute, and is consequently, in such a climate, held in the highest veneration by the inhabitants. It was anciently enclosed within a temple, some parts of which still remain, insufficient, however, to indicate the age to which it belonged, but resembling in some degree the ruins of the enclosure at Gufsah. The other fragments in the town, though numerous, are of little value as records of past ages, from their imperfect and effaced condition. They consist of solitary arches, fallen domes, foundations of baths, remains of cisterns, and one paved street with trottoirs or foot-ways on each side, like those at Pompeii. Two inscriptions, still legible, and interesting to the antiquary, were copied by Dr. Shaw; one signifies that the edifice on which it is graven was sacred to Hercules, the meaning of the other is less obvious. After the destruction of the Kazbah, about the year 1725, while the workmen were employed in clearing away the rubbish, and excavating for new foundations, an entire statue of Venus was discovered; but as all Musselmans are iconoclasts, this exquisite work of art was instantly broken to pieces. The discovery, however, is used by geographers as an auxiliary argument in establishing the position of the Veneria Sicca of Strabo. Along with Venus was found an equestrian statue of Marcus Antonius Rufus, but his dignified and military aspect, even amongst a warlike people at that time engaged in raising a military structure-was insufficient to save him from a similar fate.

The learned writers, Selden and Vossius, after Herodotus and Strabo, assert that this place derived its name, "Sicca Veneria," from Succoth-benoth, an Assyrian deity, spoken of in the seventeenth chapter, and twenty-ninth verse, of the second book of Kings. "Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt. And the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth (the tents of the daughters, or Venus,) and the men of Cuth made Nergal (fire,) and the men of Hamath made Ashima (a goat.")

ARCHBISHOP'S PALACE, AND CATHEDRAL, PALERMO.

SICILY.

"The Archbishop was the architect of this new fabric."

PALERMO is intersected by two principal streets, that cross each other at right angles, and extend in length above a mile each; in one of these, the Corso, are situated the chief buildings of the city, the cathedral, many of the handsomest churches, several mansions of the nobility, and the Archbishop's Palace, constituting its most remarkable and interesting architectural ornaments. Perhaps the busiest, certainly the most 2 F

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