I went on and on along the twisty track, bits of the mist came down and filled the hollows but lifted again at once so that I saw my way.  The twilight faded as I went, a star appeared, and I was able to see the track no longer.  I could go no further that night, yet before I lay down to sleep I decided to go and look over the edge of a wide depression in the moor that I saw a little way off.  So I left the track and walked a few hundred yards, and when I got to the edge the hollow was full of mist all white underneath me.  Another star appeared and a cold wind arose, and with the wind the mist flapped away like a curtain.  And there was the city.

Nothing the shepherd had said was the least untrue or even exaggerated.  The poor old man had told the simple truth, there is not a city like it in the world.  What he had called thin spires were minarets, but the little domes on the top were clearly pure gold as he said.  There were the marble terraces he described and the pure white palaces covered with carving and hundreds of minarets.  The city was obviously of the East and yet where there should have been crescents on the domes of the minarets there were golden suns with rays, and wherever one looked one saw things that obscured its origin.  I walked down to it, and, passing through a wicket gate of gold in a low wall of white marble, I entered the city.  The heather went right up to the city’s edge and beat against the marble wall whenever the wind blew it.  Lights began to twinkle from high windows of blue glass as I walked up the white street, beautiful copper lanterns were lit up and let down from balconies by silver chains, from doors ajar came the sound of voices singing, and then I saw the men.  Their faces were rather grey than black, and they wore beautiful robes of coloured silk with hems embroidered with gold and some with copper, and sometimes pacing down the marble ways with golden baskets hung on each side of them I saw the camels of which the old shepherd spoke.

The people had kindly faces, but, though they were evidently friendly to strangers, I could not speak with them being ignorant of their language, nor were the sounds of the syllables they used like any language I had ever heard:  they sounded more like grouse.

When I tried to ask them by signs whence they had come with their city they would only point to the moon, which was bright and full and was shining fiercely on those marble ways till the city danced in light.  And now there began appearing one by one, slipping softly out through windows, men with stringed instruments in the balconies.  They were strange instruments with huge bulbs of wood, and they played softly on them and very beautifully, and their queer voices softly sang to the music weird dirges of the griefs of their native land wherever that may be.  And far off in the heart of the city others were singing too, the sound of it came to me wherever I roamed, not loud enough to disturb my thoughts, but gently turning