‘After four or five days, having laid bare a great space one afternoon, they saw an opening as into a cellar. Taking a candle, they descended through this opening, and found that it led into a fine large square apartment, ornamented all round with columns of marble, with their bases, capitals, architrave, frieze, and cornices, carved and sculptured in _mezzo rilievo_. The space between the columns was lined with slabs and bands of marbles of different colours, ornamented with mouldings and sculptures, in harmony with the rest of the work, and inserted in the white ground of the wall, where deeds and battle-scenes were represented sculptured in relief. ‘Having at first admired these works, and entertained their fancy with the singularity of the sculpture, they pulled it to pieces, and broke up the whole of it, applying it to the same purpose as the rest. ‘Besides this apartment, they found afterwards a very low door, which led into another apartment, like an ante-chamber, where was a tomb, with its urn and its cover (_tymbre_) of white marble, very beautiful and of marvellous lustre. This sepulchre, for want of time, they did not open, the retreat having already sounded. ‘The day after, when they returned, they found the tomb opened, and the earth all round strewn with fragments of cloth of gold, and ornaments of the same metal, which made them suppose that the pirates who hovered on their coast, having some inkling of what had been discovered, had visited the place during the night, and had removed the lid of the tomb.’ Those who are acquainted with the Levant, with its wondrous tales of underground chambers and hidden treasures, will scarcely be disposed to accept, without a grain of salt, the details of this curious story. It may be true, or it may be in the main a work of the imagination. Many such stories, grounded or groundless, are flitting from mouth to mouth in Asia Minor, and rapidly growing in the process. Nevertheless it is probable that Mr. Oldfield is justified in saying that the earlier part of the tale affords a clear confirmation of the existence (which has been denied) of a lower pyramid at the Mausoleum as well as that which surmounted the building. The knights found in the ground steps of white marble like a staircase, and as they dug downwards these steps spread outwards, just as would the steps of a pyramid. The solid mass of marble had escaped while most of the upper part of the building had been carried away as material for the castles of the knights. But it survived no longer; it was carried away by the companions of De la Tourette and built into the walls of the castle. As to what Guichard tells us in regard to the contents of the inner chamber, scepticism is more justifiable. 3. _The Analogy of other Buildings._