It certainly will put the final seal of success on this extraordinary bargain." While his thoughts were busy with the pros and cons of the soul-shaking adventure now coming to its climax, his eyes were busy with the city wall and towers every moment closer, closer still.
The Master's knowledge of geology gave him the key to the otherwise inexplicable character of Jannati Shahr.

This gold, in incredible masses, had not been mined and brought hither to be fashioned into a great city.
Quite the contrary, it formed part of the cliffs and black mountains themselves.

Some stupendous volcanic upheaval of the remote past had cleft the mountain wall, and had extruded through the "fault" a huge "dyke" of virgin metal--to use technical terms.

This golden dyke, two and a half to three miles wide and of undeterminable length and depth, had merely been formed by strong, cunning hands into walls, battlements, houses, mosques, and minarets.
It had been carved out _in situ_, the soft metal being fashioned with elaborate skill and long patience.

Jannati Shahr seemed, on a larger scale and a vastly more magnificent plan, something like the hidden rock-city of Petra in the mountains of Edom--a city wholly carved by the Edomites out of the solid granite, without a single stone having been laid in mortar.
Wonderful beyond all words as the early afternoon sun gleamed from its broad-flung golden terraces and mighty walls--whereon uncounted thousands of white figures had massed themselves--the "Very Heavenly City" widened to the Legionaries' gaze.
On, up the last slope of the grassy plain the rushing horsemen bore.
Into a broad, paved way they thundered, and so up, on, toward the great gate of virgin gold now waiting to receive them..