"Excellent!" the lieutenant replied. "There must be millions of Mohammedans, themselves, who have hardly learned of this valley. Certainly, very few from the outside world ever have been able to cross the Empty Abodes, and reach it. "These people here evidently represent a far higher culture than any other Moslems ever known. Who ever saw a finer city--even not considering its material--or more wonderful cultivation of land?" His eyes wandered out over the plain, which lost itself to sight in the remote south. Roads in various directions, with here and there a few white dromedaries bearing bright-colored _shugdufs_ (litters), showed there was travel to some other inhabited spots inside the forbidding mountain girdle. Here, there, herds of antelope and flocks of sheep were grazing on broad meadows, through which trickled sparkling threads of water, half glimpsed among feathery-tufted date-palms. Plantations of fig and pomegranate, lime, apricot, and orange trees, with other fruits not recognized, slid beneath the giant liner as she slowed her pace. And broad fields of wheat, barley, tobacco, and sugar-cane showed that the people of the city had no fear of any lack. Birds were here--pelicans, cranes, and water-fowl along the brooks and gleaming pools; swift little yellow birds with crownlike crests; doves, falcons, and hawks of unknown species. Here was life abundant, after the death of the Empty Abodes. Here was rich color; here arose a softly perfumed air, balmy, incensed as with strange aromatics. Here was peace--eternal _kayf_--blessed rest--here indeed lay a scene that gave full explanation of the ancient name "Arabia Felix." And at the left, dominating all this beauty, shone and glimmered in the ardent sun the wondrous Golden City of Jannati Shahr. _Nissr_ had already begun to slant to lower levels. Now at no more than twenty-five hundred feet, with greatly reduced speed, she was drifting down the valley toward the city, the details of which were every moment becoming more apparent. Its size, the wondering Legionaries saw, must be very considerable; it might have contained three or four hundred thousand inhabitants. Its frontage along the black mountains could not have been less than two and a half miles; and, as it seemed to lose itself up a defile in those crags, no way at present existed of judging its depth. The general appearance was that of stern simplicity. A long wall of gleaming yellow bounded it, from north to south; this wall being pierced by seven gates, each flanked by minarets. Behind the wall, terraces arose, with _mesjid_ (temple) domes, innumerable houses, and some larger buildings of unknown purpose. The powerful glasses on _Nissr_ showed fretwork carving everywhere; but the main outlines of the city, none the less, gave an impression of almost primitive severity. No touch of modernity affected it. Everything appeared immensely archaic.