were exceedingly like those of the man who was represented as being embalmed in the chamber where we took our meals.  Beneath the chair, which, by the way, was shaped exactly like the one in which Ayesha had sat to give judgment, was a short inscription in the extraordinary characters of which I have already spoke, but which I do not remember sufficient of to illustrate.  It looked more like Chinese writing than any other that I am acquainted with.  This inscription Ayesha proceeded, with some difficulty and hesitation, to read aloud and translate.  It ran as follows:—­

“In the year four thousand two hundred and fifty-nine from the founding of the City of imperial Kor was this cave (or burial place) completed by Tisno, King of Kor, the people thereof and their slaves having laboured thereat for three generations, to be a tomb for their citizens of rank who shall come after.  May the blessings of the heaven above the heaven rest upon their work, and make the sleep of Tisno, the mighty monarch, the likeness of whose features is graven above, a sound and happy sleep till the day of awakening,[*] and also the sleep of his servants, and of those of his race who, rising up after him, shall yet lay their heads as low.”

     [*] This phrase is remarkable, as seeming to indicate a
     belief in a future state.—­Editor.

“Thou seest, oh Holly,” she said, “this people founded the city, of which the ruins yet cumber the plain yonder, four thousand years before this cave was finished.  Yet, when first mine eyes beheld it two thousand years ago, was it even as it is now.  Judge, therefore, how old must that city have been!  And now, follow thou me, and I will show thee after what fashion this great people fell when the time was come for it to fall,” and she led the way down to the centre of the cave, stopping at a spot where a round rock had been let into a kind of large manhole in the flooring, accurately filling it just as the iron plates fill the spaces in the London pavements down which the coals are thrown.  “Thou seest,” she said.  “Tell me, what is it?”

“Nay, I know not,” I answered; whereon she crossed to the left-hand side of the cave (looking towards the entrance) and signed to the mutes to hold up the lamps.  On the wall was something painted with a red pigment in similar characters to those hewn beneath the sculpture of Tisno, King of Kor.  This inscription she proceeded to translate to me, the pigment still being fresh enough to show the form of the letters.  It ran thus: 

“I, Junis, a priest of the Great Temple of Kor, write this upon the rock of the burying-place in the year four thousand eight hundred and three from the founding of Kor.  Kor is fallen!  No more shall the mighty feast in her halls, no more shall she rule the world, and her navies go out to commerce with the world.  Kor is fallen! and her mighty works and all the cities of Kor, and all the harbours that she built and the canals that she made, are for the