"There is land to the north, there is land to the west, there is land to the south," the oracle replied.
Emboldened by the answers I obtained, I asked again:
"And the proper route—is it by the sacred promontory, or must I sight the head of Gades?"
"Mortal!" the voice declared, "you ask more than it is permitted mortal to know. Go; I tell no more."
The stone doorway turned on its hinge, and we groped our way back through the gloom out into the open air. I recompensed the attendants liberally, and returned to the city—perplexed, it is true, but confirmed in my resolution to explore the ocean and seek for land, far or near, beyond the Straits of Gades.
In the course of our walk back, I inquired of my companion whether there were many of these subterranean temples in Zeugis and Byzatium. He told me that in the interior there were several very much more elaborate, with arches and domes, but they were not nearly so ancient; the true temples of the Atlantides were all like the one which we had just left. Some there were, indeed, that were still more simple, consisting only of three stones, flat and unhewn, of which two were placed upright on their ends, and the third laid horizontally across them; others were formed of stones arranged in a long covered avenue. Of these, some were in the open air and some concealed under mounds of earth, at the top of which several stones were reared, while round the base circles of still larger stones were grouped symmetrically. No doubt some of these erections were not temples, but tombs, and were occasionally found in such numbers as to cover a large extent of ground, and were laid out in set figures, representing men, serpents, eggs, and scorpions.
Such was the Libyan's account of his religious edifices. When, however, I began to question him about their signification, and why some were underground and some above, and what was the design of their peculiar construction, I could elicit nothing from him but that it was the result of magic, of which his people had inherited the great secret from their forefathers.
Early the following morning, with the suffect's permission, I set to work to take in a supply of fresh water from the fine cisterns on the quays. Each cistern is divided into two compartments; one to collect the rain-water in its turbid condition from the paved streets, the other to receive the same water when it has undergone the process of filtration; the two tanks being connected by square-headed cocks turned by a wooden key. All the private houses, as well as the public buildings, in the towns, are provided with cisterns of a similar construction, the country villages being supplied with water from open tanks formed by two circular compartments, of which one acts as a receptacle and the other as a reservoir.