[p.331]The roof of the colonnade consists of a number of small domes, white-washed on the outside, in the same manner as those of Mekka. The interior walls are also white-washed all round, except the southern one, and part of the S.E. corner, which are cased with slabs of marble, nearly up to the top. Several rows of inscriptions, in large gilt letters, are conducted along this wall, one above the other, and have a very brilliant effect upon the white marble. The floor under the colonnades, on the west and east sides, and part of the north, is laid out with a coarse pavement; the other part of the N. side being unpaved, and merely covered with sand; as is likewise the whole open yard. On the south side, where the builder of the mosque has lavished all this ornament, the floor is paved with fine marble across the whole colonnade; and in those parts nearest to the tomb of Mohammed, this pavement is in mosaic, of excellent workmanship, forming one of the best specimens of that kind to be seen in the East. Large and high windows, with glass panes, (of which I know not any other instance in the Hedjaz) admit the light through the southern wall; some of them are of fine painted glass. On the other sides, smaller windows are dispersed along the walls, but not with glass panes. [The art of painting glass with durable colours seems never to have been lost in the East.] Near the S.E. corner stands the famous tomb, so detached from the walls of the mosque, as to leave between it and the S. wall a space of about twenty-five feet, and fifteen between it and the E. wall. The enclosure, which defends the tomb from the too near approach of visiters, forms an irregular square of about twenty paces, in the midst of the colonnade, several of its pillars being included within it: it is an iron railing, painted green, about two-thirds the height of the columns, filling up the intervals between them, so as to leave their upper part projecting above it, and entirely open. The railing is of good workmanship, in imitation of filligree, and is interwoven with open-worked inscriptions of yellow bronze, supposed by the vulgar to be of gold, and of so close a texture, that no view can be gained into