rock; the white marble buildings on its summit could be seen from a great
distance. These buildings formed the citadel, round the threefold walls
of which, many centuries before, King Meles had carried a lion in order
to render them impregnable. On its southern side the citadel-rock was
not so steep, and houses had been built upon it. Croesus' former palace
lay to the north, on the golden-sanded Pactolus. This reddish-colored
river flowed above the market-place, (which, to our admiring travellers,
looked like a barren spot in the midst of a blooming meadow), ran on in a
westerly direction, and then entered a narrow mountain valley, where it
washed the walls of the temple of Cybele.

Large gardens stretched away towards the east, and in the midst of them
lay the lake Gygaeus, covered with gay boats and snowy swans, and
sparkling like a mirror.

A short distance from the lake were a great number of artificial mounds,
three of which were especially noticeable from their size and height.

[See also Hamilton's Asia Minor, I. P. 145. Herodotus (I. 93.)
calls the tombs of the Lydian kings the largest works of human
hands, next to the Egyptian and Babylonian. These cone-shaped hills
can be seen to this day, standing near the ruins of Sardis, not far
from the lake of Gygaea. Hamilton (Asia Minor, I. p. i) counted
some sixty of them, and could not ride round the hill of Alayattes
in less than ten minutes. Prokesch saw l00 such tumuli. The
largest, tomb of Alyattes, still measures 3400 feet in
circumference, and the length of its slope is 650 feet. According
to Prokesch, gigantic Phallus columns lie on some of these graves.]

"What can those strange-looking earth-heaps mean?" said Darius, the