His first care was, with incredible fatigue, to make a very deep ditch round the cavern. He contrived a passage to it underground, the opening of which he covered with his clothes, that in a few days he laid upon them, and afterwards raised a hut of earth to preserve himself from the weather. All that he suffered during these immense labours is not to be conceived, and no one could have imagined, who had seen him thus wasted with labour and fatigue, that he was the richest inhabitant of the earth.
When he had conducted his work so far as to be able to leave it without fear, he repaired again to the city, but with the same precaution—that is to say, he went only in the night. He employed it wholly in purchasing some slaves, with whose assistance by degrees he brought thither everything tha
