extraordinary affluence of black hair, tastefully disposed, and decorated with plumes and flowers. At the village where the dead and wounded were left, with their relatives and friends, doleful lamentations were heard, until the expedition approached the city. The walls of this metropolis were sixty feet high, sloping inward from the foundation, surmounted by a parapet which overhung in a concave curve and rested upon a plain moulding. They were evidently a massive work of a remote period, for although constructed of large blocks of granitic stone, white and glittering in the sun, passing ages had corroded rough crevices between the layers, and the once perfect cornices had become indented by the tooth of time. The sculptured annals of the city recorded them an antiquity of four thousand years. They formed a parallelogram four miles long and three in width, thus inclosing an area of nearly twelve square miles, and they breasted the cardinal points of the horizon with a single gate, or propylon, midway on every side. On approaching the eastern gate, the travellers discovered that the foundations of the walls were laid in a deep foss or moat a hundred feet wide, nearly full to its brink and abounding with water-fowl. It was replenished from the mountains, and discharged its surplus waters into the lakes of the valley. It was to be crossed by a draw-bridge now raised over the gate, and the parapet was thronged with the populace to behold the entrance of so large a number of strangers for whom there was no return.