In single file, for the passages were too narrow to allow of any other means of progression, they threaded the tortuous and mazy paths of the great building, passing between huge walls built of granite blocks laid without mortar, till at length they reached a large open space.

Here the ceremony had already begun.

Almost in the centre of this space, which was paved with blocks of granite, stood two conical towers, the larger of which measured thirty feet in height and the smaller about half as much.

These towers, also build of blocks of stone, were, as Metem informed them, sacred to and emblematical of the gods El and Baaltis.

In front of them was a platform surmounted by a stone altar, and between them, built in a pit in the ground, burned a great furnace of wood.