RUINS OF BAALBEK, SYRIA. Baalbek,—the city of Baal or the Sun, the Heliopolis of the Greeks, once famous as the most magnificent of Syrian cities, which passed successively under the rule of the Persians, Greeks and Romans, was plundered by the Arabs in A. D. 639, by the Christians and others during the Crusades, and was finally sacked and dismantled by the Tartars, under Tamerlane.—Baalbek to-day exists only as a mass of ruins; but its very ruins are of the utmost magnificence. The most imposing are the remains of the Great Temple. But the most beautiful is the Circular Temple—a semi-circular cella surrounded on the outside by eight Corinthian columns. Within there is a double tier of smaller pillars, the lower row being Ionic and the upper Corinthian. In modern times, and, indeed, up to the present century, this was used as a Greek church, but it is now deserted and choked with débris.
TAJ MAHAL, AGRA, HINDOSTAN. This magnificent mausoleum is the glory of Indo-Mussulman architecture. It was built by the Emperor Shah Jehan for himself and his favorite wife, Nourmahal, who died in child-birth in 1629. For twenty-two years twenty thousand men were employed in its construction, the total cost reaching $16,000,000. Built of white marble, it forms a quadrangle of one hundred and ninety square yards, surmounted by a lofty dome, with smaller domes at each corner and four graceful minarets one hundred and thirty-three feet high. The great central hall is paved with squares of various-colored marbles, while the walls, tombs and screens are ornamented by exquisite mosaic work. The elegance and delicacy of the design and the elaborate perfection in every detail of the workmanship are alike marvelous. It seems almost like a castle built in a dream, a fabric of mist and sunbeams, which would dissolve at a touch. Yet it has resisted the encroachments of time and the barbarian despoiler, and has come down to our day almost perfect.
PEARL MOSQUE, AGRA, HINDOSTAN. The very name of the building is a tribute to its beauty. It is undoubtedly the most elegant mosque of Indian-Mahometan architecture. Although it gives the general impression of lightness, grace, delicacy, it is by no means a small building. Externally it is two hundred and thirty-five feet east and west by one hundred and ninety feet north and south. The court yard is one hundred and fifty-five feet square. The mass is also considerable, as the whole is raised on a terrace of artificial construction, by the aid of which it stands well out from the surrounding buildings. Its chief beauty consists in its court yard, which is wholly of white marble from the pavement to the summit of its domes. The interior is a bewildering maze of columns of exquisite proportions.
EL CAPITAN, YOSEMITE VALLEY, CALIFORNIA. The Yosemite Valley is one of the most marvelous natural parks in the world. About nine miles in length and from three-quarters of a mile to a mile and a quarter in width, it is sunk almost a mile below the level of the surrounding country. High granite walls rise sheer and inaccessible on each side. Cataracts of the wildest and strangest beauty abound. Flowers of every hue cover the ground. Where all is wonderful it might seem hard to select. Yet by common consent the surpassing feature of the valley scenery is the great cliff, known as El Capitan or The Captain. “It is doubtful,” says Professor J. D. Whitney, “if anywhere in the world there is presented so squarely cut, so lofty and so imposing a face of rock.” Not indeed that it is the highest of the gigantic brotherhood. Its three thousand three hundred feet are exceeded in its own vicinity by over thousands of feet. But no other rock, here or elsewhere, has so majestic and awe-compelling a presence.
BIG TREES, CALIFORNIA. Rigid scientists call these trees Sequoia gigantea. In England they are sometimes known as Wellingtonia, in America as Washingtonia. But the pride of science and of patriotism have had to bow to the will of the populace, which has been satisfied with the simpler and therefore more energetic title of Big Trees. They are confined to the western portion of the California range, occurring in detached groups or groves at an altitude of from four thousand to five thousand feet above the sea. Some of these vast vegetable columns are upwards of thirty feet in diameter, and from three to four hundred feet in height. One of the trees in the Mariposa Grove, represented in the accompanying engraving—some twenty-five feet in diameter—stands directly arching the roadway, and a miniature tunnel has been cut through it which admits of the passage of a four-horse stage coach.
