560 
PETRIFYING LAKE 
valley beneath watered by other streams, and luxuriant in ver¬ 
dure. Yet, happy as this spot seems, peculiarly so from its 
gelid freshness in these depths of scorching summer, to our 
amazement we could discern no village in or near the valley. 
But, to return to the ruins on the hill: an extensive range, 
which must formerly have been some immense quadrangular 
course of buildings, appears to the west of the petrifying lake. 
The walls of this square are composed of brick intermixed with 
stone. Several Saracenic arches rise amongst them, formerly 
covered with stucco, and which mark this spot to have been of 
another era than the city gates. In this quarter also, the remains 
of a large hall present themselves : the span is fifteen yards, the 
length thirty where a wall closes it in ; the height is forty feet. 
Several fragments yet exist within, covered with Arabic inscrip¬ 
tions from the Koran. The ruins lie more thickly and exten¬ 
sively to the eastward of the lake. Amongst them I found the 
remains of a bath almost entire ; also, to the south-west, a 
large square building of hewn stone, with a wide columned 
portal of a hard red kind of marble. Part of the shafts and tors 
of the columns were still there, with some fragments of curious 
fretwork carved on the same sort of stone. These relics re¬ 
semble the style of the city walls, both appearing to me to have 
been ancient Armenian workmanship. The buildings of brick 
mingled with stone, are of a different character; and probably 
have been constructed of the old materials, in subsequent times, 
by some of the caliphs, or sovereigns immediately succeeding 
them ; for, to the innovation of the Arabian, or Saracenic 
government in Persia, may be ascribed the first introduction of 
the pointed arch also. The semicircular form, has been dated 
from the Greeks with Alexander; and a proof shewn, in the 
