[13] Animated by this unexpected
prospect, he continued his progress for several hours after sunrise. At
length, utterly exhausted, he sought refuge from the overpowering heat
beneath the cupola of the ruined tomb of some Moslem saint. At sunset
he continued his journey, and in the morning found himself within a few
miles of the city. He halted, and watched with anxiety for some evidence
of its inhabitants. None was visible. No crowds or cavalcades issued
from the gates. Not a single human being, not a solitary camel, moved in
the vicinity.
The day was too advanced for the pilgrim to proceed, but so great was
his anxiety to reach this unknown settlement, and penetrate the mystery
of its silence, that ere sunset Alroy entered the gates.
A magnificent city, of an architecture with which he was unacquainted,
offered to his entranced vision its gorgeous ruins and deserted
splendour; long streets of palaces, with their rich line of lessening
pillars, here and there broken by some fallen shaft, vast courts
surrounded by ornate and solemn temples, and luxurious baths adorned
with rare mosaics, and yet bright with antique gilding; now an arch of
triumph, still haughty with its broken friezes; now a granite obelisk
covered with strange characters, and proudly towering over a prostrate
companion; sometimes a void and crumbling theatre, sometimes a long and
elegant aqueduct, sometimes a porphyry column, once breathing with the
heroic statue that now lies shivered at its base, all suffused with the
warm twilight of an eastern eve.
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