Resting on the rim of the coffin were the relics that he had already recovered from the debris—bits of shattered pottery, and a beautiful but mutilated statuette of terra-cotta about five inches in height.
From that cell they descended to a large chamber on a lower level, where there were many coffins and a plenitude of bones.
When in recent years three Phœnician catacombs were discovered it was found that their existence had been known to the Moors, who at some unknown date had already despoiled them of treasure, leaving traces of their appropriation in the form of broken water jars and other worthless relics. Fortunately the Moors valued only the gold, so that, in spite of the damage caused by their rough handling, a mine of precious things still remains to gladden the archæologist.
Leaving the sunny hill-side, where spring flowers were blooming among the crumbling bones of these nameless dead, we mounted to the house by the windmills, where the treasures found in the graves are primarily housed.
There also was the padre a welcome guest, and in a small dark room wonderful things were shown us. Tiny jars delicately figured; perfect vases of iridescent glass; strange bas-relief recumbent figures with stiffly extended hands; antique coins, scarabs that the Moors had bereft of their setting, ornaments that had escaped their rapacity, and old lamps enough to have satisfied even the covetous Abanazer.
It was oddly suggestive to think that, while the people who were entombed in these stone coffins thousands of years ago had known delicate arts and worn costly jewellery, their successors on the land lived in primitive dwellings and drew the water they drank in earthenware jars that in form were exact copies of those so long buried in the tombs. Truly in some things the world has not progressed!
