ANCIENT KINGS OF ARABIA. 147 



rocks, while they excluded the cooling breezes, would 

 concentrate the sun's rays with double intensity. 

 Safety and protection appear to have been the only 

 objects that could induce a wealthy people to select 

 so remarkable a site for their capital. The en- 

 tire face of the cUffs, and sides of the mountains, 

 are covered with an endless variety of excavated 

 tombs, private dwellings, and public buildings : pre- 

 senting altogether a spectacle to which nothing 

 perhaps is analogous in any other part of the world. 

 '' It is impossible,"' says :Mr. Banks, " to give the 

 reader an idea of the singular effect of rocks tinted 

 with the most extraordinary hues, whose summits 

 present nature in her most savage and romantic 

 form ; while their bases are worked out in all the 

 symmetry and regularity of art, with colonnades, 

 and pediments, and ranges of corridors, adhering to 

 the perpendicular surface." The inner and wider 

 extremity of the circuitous defile by which the city 

 is approached is sculptured and excavated in a sin- 

 gular manner ; and these become more frequent on 

 both sides, until at last it has the appearance of a 

 continued street of tombs. 



About half-way through there is a single spot, 

 abrupt and precipitous, where the area of this natural 

 chasm spreads a little, and sweeps into an irregular 

 circle. This had been chosen for the site of the most 

 elaborate, if not the most extensive, of all these archi- 

 tectural monuments. The natives gave it the name 

 of Kazr Faraoun, the castle or palace of Pharaoh, 

 though it resembled more the sepulchre than the 

 residence of a prince. On its summit was placed a 

 large vase, once furnished apparently vriXh handles 

 of metal, and supposed by the Arabs to be filled with 

 coins ; hence they denominated this raj'sterious urn 

 the Treasun.^ of Pharaoh. Its height and position 

 have most probably baffled every approach of avarice 

 or curiosity ; from above it is rendered as inacces- 

 sible by the bold projection of the rough rocks, as it 



