Masts might be seen whereon purple sails were drying, and on the highest terraces clay furnaces for heating the pickle were visible.
Behind, the lofty houses of the city rose in an ampitheatre of cubical form.

They were built of stone, planks, shingle, reeds, shells, and beaten earth.

The woods belonging to the temples were like lakes of verdure in this mountain of diversely-coloured blocks.

It was levelled at unequal distances by the public squares, and was cut from top to bottom by countless intersecting lanes.

The enclosures of the three old quarters which are now lost might be distinguished; they rose here and there like great reefs, or extended in enormous fronts, blackened, half-covered with flowers, and broadly striped by the casting of filth, while streets passed through their yawning apertures like rivers beneath bridges.
The hill of the Acropolis, in the centre of Byrsa, was hidden beneath a disordered array of monuments.