Its size, the wondering Legionaries saw, must be very considerable; it might have contained three or four hundred thousand inhabitants.

Its frontage along the black mountains could not have been less than two and a half miles; and, as it seemed to lose itself up a defile in those crags, no way at present existed of judging its depth.
The general appearance was that of stern simplicity.

A long wall of gleaming yellow bounded it, from north to south; this wall being pierced by seven gates, each flanked by minarets.

Behind the wall, terraces arose, with _mesjid_ (temple) domes, innumerable houses, and some larger buildings of unknown purpose.
The powerful glasses on _Nissr_ showed fretwork carving everywhere; but the main outlines of the city, none the less, gave an impression of almost primitive severity.

No touch of modernity affected it.
Everything appeared immensely archaic.
"The Jerusalem of Solomon's day," thought the Master, "must have looked like that--barring only that this is solid gold." Out from the city, a little less than two-thirds of the way down, issued a rather considerable stream.