CALLED TACKT-I-SOLOMON. 
559 
of the water, that the successive overflowings of the lake, (seem¬ 
ingly all bent to the eastward,) where the walls are now low, 
have encrusted the whole of the earth in that direction, and the 
intermediate ruins besides, with a thick mass of petrifaction ; 
also, they have poured down the steep face of the fortress to the 
plain beneath, and, becoming partially arrested in their passage, 
have covered both with the same creamy hue, though of a sub¬ 
stance hard as stone. The high encrustation immediately sur¬ 
rounding the lake has doubtless acquired its present elevation 
from the successive deposit of many years ; and since the com¬ 
plete abandonment of the town, when all channels for taking off 
the superflux of water would be left to its natural disposition 
for blocking up, this accumulation must have redoubled twenty 
fold; and, the natives say, every year that raises the heap 
around the oval of the lake, contracts the extent of its cir¬ 
cumference. From these observations, we may be led to con¬ 
clude that the whole hill, in the centre of which the lake now 
lies, was originally, and by the action of ages, the offspring of 
this very water, then opened in a broader mass, and nearly 
on a level with the common surface of the plain ; but which, in 
successive overflowings, condensing, and elevating its petrified 
self to the height and circumference of the present hill of Tackt- 
-i-Solomon, at length became surmounted by a noble city. The 
hill stands fifty feet above the valley ; and adding that to the 
probable great original depth of the lake, from its first surface 
on the plain, we may give some credit to the difficulty of any 
plummet of the country-people finding its bottom. 
The town on its summit must have been delightfully situated, 
from the view it commanded, grand and beautiful; the moun¬ 
tains above, towering in all their cloud-capped majesty; the 
