356 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



materials, and, as at Memphis and Thebes, to have dis- 

 appeared altogether, the city may have covered an im- 

 mense extent. , 



The reader is perhaps disappointed, but we were not. 

 There was no necessity for assigning to the ruined city 

 an immense extent, or an antiquity coeval with that of 

 the Egyptians or of any other ancient and known peo- 

 ple. What we had before our eyes was grand, curious, 

 and remarkable enough. Here were the remains of a 

 cultivated, polished, and peculiar people, who had passed 

 through all the stages incident to the rise and fall of na- 

 tions ; reached their golden age, and perished, entirely 

 unknown. The links which connected them with the 

 human family were severed and lost, and these were 

 the only memorials of their footsteps upon earth. "We 

 lived in the ruined palace of their kings ; .we went up 

 to their desolate temples and fallen altars ; and wher- 

 ever we moved we saw the evidences of their taste, 

 their skill in arts, their wealth and power. In the midst 

 of desolation and ruin we looked back to the past, 

 cleared away the gloomy forest, and fancied every 

 building perfect, with its terraces and pyramids, its 

 sculptured and painted ornaments, grand, lofty, and 

 imposing, and overlooking an immense inhabited plain ; 

 we called back into life the strange people who gazed 

 at us in sadness from the walls ; pictured them, in fanci- 

 ful costumes and adorned with plumes of feathers, as- 

 cending the terraces of the palace and the steps lead- 

 ing to the temples ; and often we imagined a scene of 

 unique and gorgeous beauty and magnificence, reali- 

 sing the creations of Oriental poets, the very spot which 

 fancy would have selected for the " Happy Valley" of 

 Rasselas. In the romance of the world's history no- 

 thing ever impressed me more forcibly than the spceta- 



