“The level rays of the setting sun now streamed across the plain, and we came on the ruins of Derey’eeyah, filling up the whole breadth of the valley beneath. The palace walls, of unbaked brick, like the rest, rose close under the left or northern edge, but unroofed and tenantless; a little lower down a wide extent of fragments showed where the immense mosque had been, and hard by, the market-place; a tower on an isolated height was, I suppose, the original dwelling-place of the Sa’ood family, while yet mere local chieftains, before growing greatness transferred them to their imperial palace. The outer fortifications remained almost uninjured for much of their extent, with turrets and bastions reddening in the western light; in other places the Egyptian artillery, or the process of years, had levelled them with the earth; within the town many houses were yet standing, but uninhabited, and the lines of the streets from gate to gate were distinct as in a ground plan. From the great size of the town (for it is full half a mile in length, and not much less in breadth), and from the close packing of the houses, I should estimate its capacity at above forty thousand indwellers. The gardens lie without, and still ‘living waved where man had ceased to live,’ in full beauty and luxuriance, a deep green ring around the gray ruins. For although the Nedjeans, holding it for an ill omen to rebuild and reinhabit a town so fatally overthrown, have transplanted the seat of government, and with it the bulk of the city population, to Ri’ad, they have not deemed it equally necessary to abandon the rich plantations and well-watered fields belonging to the old capital; and thus a small colony of gardeners in scattered huts and village dwellings close under the walls protract the blighted existence of Derey’eeyah.