Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction; Tarzan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
The lower course having been built up in this manner to a height of
six inches wooden arches were placed at intervals the lengths of
the corridors which were now ceiled over by the simple expedient of
fastening thin wooden strips lengthways of the corridors from arch to
arch until the corridors were entirely roofed. The strips, or boards,
which overlapped one another, were fastened in place by wooden dowels
driven through them into the peripheries of the arches. As this work
was progressing the walls of the various chambers and the outer wall of
the building were raised to a height of twenty-four inches, bringing
them to the level of the ceilings of the arched corridors, and the
spaces between chambers and corridors were packed with bowlders, the
interstices between which were filled with smaller stones and gravel.
The ceiling beams were then placed across the other chambers, timbers
six inches square hewn from a hard, tough wood being used, and in the
larger chambers these were further supported, at intervals, by columns
of the same dimensions and material. The ceiling beams being in place
they were covered over with tight fitting boards, doweled to place. The
ceilings of the chambers now projected six inches above the surrounding
course of the structure, and at this juncture hundreds of cauldrons
were brought in which a crude asphaltum was heated until it became
liquid and the interstices of the next six inch course were filled with
it, bringing the entire completed course to the same level at a height
of thirty inches, over all of which a second six inch course of rock
and asphaltum was laid, and the second story laid out and completed in
a similar manner.
The palace of Adendrohahkis, constructed in this way, was two hundred
twenty feet in diameter, and one hundred ten feet high, with thirty-six
floors capable of housing eighty thousand people, a veritable ant-hill
of humanity. The city consisted of ten similar domes, though each
slightly smaller than the king's, housing a total of five hundred
thousand people, two-thirds of whom were slaves; these being for the
most part the artisans and body servants of the ruling class. Another
half million slaves, the unskilled laborers of the city, dwelt in
the subterranean chambers of the quarries from which the building
material was obtained. The passageways and chambers of these mines
were carefully shored and timbered as the work progressed, resulting
in fairly commodious and comfortable quarters for the slaves upon the
upper levels at least, and as the city was built upon the surface
of an ancient ground moraine, on account of the accessibility of
building material, the drainage was perfect, the slaves suffering no
inconvenience because of their underground quarters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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