Behold the huge city which stretches out before you.
Neither ancient Rome nor modern London, nor yet the capital of the Celestial Empire, not even Babylon, far famed of old, not one of the congeries of houses of the known world, is to be compared with this city.
View it even from the top of this high hill, and you cannot take in half of it. Formerly it was bounded by two great rivers, but now these also are covered with houses, and have their course assigned to them out of sight, beneath the town.
A fantastic, extravagant architecture, all glitter and luxuriance, the creation of a wild fancy, forms a striking contrast to the simplicity of the classic and the sublimity of the Gothic style.
The gates of the city consist of strange pyramidal structures formed of gigantic layers of cubes, one above the other, the spaces between each cube being wide enough to admit the passage of two heavily laden waggons abreast. The lowermost layer consists of eleven cubes, the next layer of ten, and so on, regularly diminishing by one up to the eleventh, topmost, solitary cube towering high into the air, and surmounted by the image of the unshapely Megatherium, the tutelary deity of the city. Each of these dazzling cubic stones shows a bas relief representing a human figure with a crown on its head, and a sceptre in its hand, whilst wondrous hieroglyphics below record the six-and-sixty names of the ancient rulers of the city.
The first thing which strikes the stranger as he enters the city is the intoxicating, voluptuous perfume which seems to form part of the atmosphere, the exhalation whereof, like a golden mist, extends all over the place, enveloping the towers and roofs of the loftiest palaces in a romantic chiarooscuro. 'Tis the odour of ambergris and musk, and other perfumes, now unknown, which the owners of these palaces have mingled with the mortar of their walls so that the whole town may be bathed in an eternal sea of fragrance. Every street spreads abroad its own peculiar, pleasant odour.
Viewed from afar, all these palaces seem like so many houses of cards. One row of columns rises above another, and each row is encircled by wondrous gossamer trellis-work, so that they look for all the world like aerial, unsubstantial balconies. The lowest row of columns consists of glittering, polished metal (mostly copper), the next rows of jasper or alabaster, and the uppermost of transparent, prismatically fashioned glass, the facets of which catch the morning and evening rays of the tropical sun, and scatter fantastic rainbows on every side of them.
None of the houses have external windows, as with us, so that it is impossible to peep inside them. The whole façade is covered with wonderful statuary—on whose extraordinary groups the eye would willingly linger, if fresh wonders did not every moment divert its attention at every step.
The streets are spanned by arched bridges, which unite the roofs of the opposite houses, so that the city can not only be traversed lengthways by the streets, but crossways also by the roofs and bridges above—the latter, in fact, being the night, as the former is the day route. No sooner has the sinking of the star of day wrapped the streets in darkness than the bridges become animated and populous. Laughing and singing, the noisy groups crowd the bronze bridges and the gardened house-tops. Every house is now open to all, and reveals its sweet mysteries; every roof is bright with the glare of torches, and the half-naked bands, flitting to and fro, revel tumultuously on high.
If any one were to stand in the street below at such times he would hear nothing but an indescribable, terrifying hubbub, occasioned by the mysterious orgies above his head.