646 
MOUND OF RUINS, PROBABLY 
spots of the whole magnificent platform. To me, it seemed to 
tell its own story ; lying like the buried body of the last Darius 
under the ruins of his capital, and speaking with a voice from 
the grave ; crying, in the words of Euripides over the like 
desolation, — “ O woe, woe, woe ! My country lost! — And 
thou, boast of my noble ancestors, how art thou shrunk, — how 
art thou vanished !” 
From the southern extremity of the eastern colonnade, on the 
terrace of the Chehel Minar, and over all the heaped fragments 
which slope from that point down upon the surface of the great 
platform, is an expanse of three hundred and fifteen feet, mea¬ 
suring in a direct line from the colonnade to the northern front 
(a) of the building on the fifth terrace, yet to be described. The 
whole of this vast space lies open, without a protruding wall, or 
pillar ; but its plain is interrupted by an immense mound of 
ruins v, commencing at b b, and sinking again into the level 
surface, at c c; these two points, being the extreme ends 
of a line through d, marking a spacious area between the 
mound and the dwelling-palace on the fifth terrace, and the 
entrances to which were (e e) by two flights of stairs on the east 
and west. The appearance of the mound has every mark of 
having been a pile of ruins, hid from the face of day for ages ; and, 
as it has long been an established fact, that the great architectural 
remains before us are not of temples, but of mansions dedicated 
to the use of the sovereigns of Persia, and their retinue ; I would 
hazard an opinion, that this immense heap covers the mouldered 
relics of a division of the palace answerable to that (a) immediately 
to the south ; probably the most magnificent of the two, as it would 
lie so much nearer the Chehel Minar, or great hall of audience; 
and likely, from that circumstance, contained the chambers of 
