I now came in full sight of the building.

Yes, it had been made by hands, and hollowed partly out of a great rock.

I should have supposed it at the first glance to have been of the earliest form of Egyptian architecture.

It was fronted by huge columns, tapering upward from massive plinths, and with capitals that, as I came nearer, I perceived to be more ornamental and more fantastically graceful that Egyptian architecture allows.

As the Corinthian capital mimics the leaf of the acanthus, so the capitals of these columns imitated the foliage of the vegetation neighbouring them, some aloe-like, some fern-like.