EL BARA.
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of them. The best executed one that I saw was of this
form. On the outside of the town are several sepulchral ¬
caves, and a few coffins.
The town walls on the E. side are yet standing; they are
very neatly built with small stones, with a square pillar at every six
or seven paces, about nine feet high.
The ruins extend for about
half an hour from south to north, and consist of a number of public ¬
buildings, churches, and private habitations, the walls and roofs
of some of which are still standing.
I found no inscriptions here.
The stone with which the buildings are constructed is a soft calcareous ¬
rock, that speedily decays wherever it is exposed to the
air ; it is of the same description as that found in the buildings of
the towns about the mountain of St. Simon, and in the ruins of St.
Simon, where not a single legible inscription remains, though, as at
Bara, traces of them are seen in many places. We surveyed the town
in all directions, but saw no building worth noticing,
except three tombs, which are plain square structures ¬
surmounted with pyramids. The pyramidal
summit of one of them has fallen. The interior of
these tombs is a square of six paces ; on the side
opposite the door is a stone coffin ; and two others
in each of the other two walls ; the pyramidal roof
is well construted, being hollow to the top, with
I
rounded angles, and without any interior support.
On the outside the pyramid is covered with thin slabs, on each of
which is a kind of knob, which gives the whole a very singular appearance. ¬
The height of the whole building may be about twentyfour -
feet. In one of the tombs is a window, the other is quite
dark. Two of them stand near together; the third is in a different ¬
part of the-town. The sides of one of the coffins is carved
with a cross in the middle.
