They Are Not Placed In Regular Rows In Line With The River,
But "A' Through Ither," As The Scotch Say, In Lavish, Exuberant
Crowds, As If Nature In Wildest Extravagance Held Her Bravest
Structures As Common As Gravel-Piles.
Yonder stands a spiry cathedral
nearly five thousand feet in height, nobly symmetrical, with sheer
buttressed walls and arched doors and windows, as richly finished and
decorated with sculptures as the great rock temples of India or Egypt.
Beside it rises a huge castle with arched gateway, turrets, watch-towers, ramparts, etc., and to right and left palaces, obelisks, and
pyramids fairly fill the gulf, all colossal and all lavishly painted
and carved. Here and there a flat-topped structure may be seen, or
one imperfectly domed; but the prevailing style is ornate Gothic, with
many hints of Egyptian and Indian.
Throughout this vast extent of wild architecture - nature's own capital
city - there seem to be no ordinary dwellings. All look like grand and
important public structures, except perhaps some of the lower
pyramids, broad-based and sharp-pointed, covered with down-flowing
talus like loosely set tents with hollow, sagging sides. The roofs
often have disintegrated rocks heaped and draggled over them, but in
the main the masonry is firm and laid in regular courses, as if done
by square and rule.
Nevertheless they are ever changing; their tops are now a dome, now a
flat table or a spire, as harder or softer strata are reached in their
slow degradation, while the sides, with all their fine moldings, are
being steadily undermined and eaten away.
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