KARNAK. 141 despoiled sanctuaries, as if it had never been otherwise, since the world began. Figures are of no use, in describing a place like this, but since I must use them, I may say that the length of the ruins before us, from west to east, was twelve hundred feet, and that the total circumference of Karnak, including its numerous pylae, or gateways, is a mile and a half.

We mounted and rode with fast-beating hearts to the westem or main entrance, facing the Nile. The two towers of the propylon—pyramidal masses of solid stone—are three hundred and twenty-nine feet in length, and the one which is least ruined, is nearly one hundred feet in height. On each side of the sculptured portal connecting them, is a tablet left by the French army, recording the geographical position of the principal Egyptian temples. We passed through and entered an open court, more than three hundred feet square, with a corridor of immense pillars on each side, connecting it with the towers of a second pylon, nearly as gigantic as the first. A colonnade of lofty shafts, leading through the centre of the court, once united the two entrances, but they have all been hurled down and lay as they fell, in long lines of disjointed blocks, except one, which holds its solitary lotus-bell against the sky. Two mutilated colossi of red granite still guard the doorway, whose lintel-stones are forty feet in length. Climbing over the huge fragments which have fallen from above and almost blocked up the passage, we looked down into the grand hall of the temple.

I knew the dimensions of this hall, beforehand ; I knew the number and size of the pillars, but I was no more prepared for the reality than those will be, who may read this account of it and afterwards visit Karnak for them elves. It is the great good-luck of travel that many things must be seen to be known