The fine herbage procured us a whole day’s rest, as the camel-drivers were in no haste to bring up their camels. Not knowing this, but yet convinced that we should not start at an early hour, as the well was at some distance, and following the information received from the Zintáni, who was himself too lame to accompany me, I had taken my gun and pistols at an early hour in the morning, and gone in the direction of the valley to look after a monument. After nearly two hours’ march I distinguished something like a high pillar, and, proceeding straight towards it, found it to be one of the richest specimens of this kind of monument bequeathed to us by antiquity, and an indisputable proof that these regions, now so poor, must have then supported a population sufficiently advanced in taste and feeling to admire works of a refined character. [Illustration] The monument rises, upon a base of three steps and in three stories, nearly to a height of forty-eight feet. The base contains a sepulchral chamber 4 ft. 10⅓ in. long, and 4 ft. ⅛ in. broad, with three niches, one on the north, and two on the east side. This side was the principal face of the monument, forming its most ornamented part. The first story measures at its base on the east and west sides 5 ft 5⅜ in., and on the north and south sides 4 ft. 10⅛ in.: it consists of six layers of stones, on the lowest of which is represented a pair of wild animals, probably panthers, with their fore legs or paws resting upon a sepulchral urn, as if they were watching it; on the next layer above is seen the handsome bust of a young female; two layers intervene without sculpture; and the fifth is ornamented on all the four sides with hunting-scenes. The frieze on every side is formed by four rosettes; but that on the north side has some additional decoration, the second rosette on that side, from the east, exhibiting a group of centaurs, and the fourth a cock. Upon this part of the frieze is a garland of clusters of grapes; then follows the moulding.