This Libyan chain, in the distance so delicately rose, is positively frightful now that it overhangs us.

It looks what it is--an enormous and fantastic tomb, a natural necropolis, whose vastness and horror nothing human could equal, an ideal stove for corpses that wanted to endure for ever.
The limestone, on which for that matter no rain ever falls from the changeless sky, looks to be in one single piece from summit to base, and betrays no crack or crevice by which anything might penetrate into the sepulchres within.

The dead could sleep, therefore, in the heart of these monstrous blocks as sheltered as under vaults of lead.

And of what there is of magnificence the centuries have taken care.

The continual passage of winds laden with dust has scaled and worn away the face of the rocks, so as to leave only the denser veins of stone, and thus have reappeared strange architectural fantasies such as Matter, in the beginning, might have dimly conceived.