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Rh of the exterior was unplastered, and the dried slime and soot reposed on the mass of bricks in murky grandeur. Not unfrequently a young shoot of a Bur or a less noble vegetable had struck its roots in the crevices between the layers of bricks, realizing, rather on an humble scale, the Persian monarch's dream of a hanging garden.

The house was divided into four distinct sections. In front you entered through a pair of massive iron-plated and tar-coloured doors into a spacious courtyard, three sides of which were faced by double-storied verandas of no very respectable height. Opposite the portal arose the lofty and spacious hall of five arches. All around was well plastered, but the return of many a rainy season had variegated the white with streaks of dark, particularly in those regions which were surmounted by spouts for drawing off the water from the top. A mazy suite of dark and damp apartments led from a corner of this part of the building to the inner mahal, another quadrangle, on all four sides of which towered double-storied verandas as before. These had indeed a plastering of sand and lime, but few were the pillars which wore these decorations entire, decay aided by the manipulations of idle children having stripped most of them of their coverings. The walls of all the chambers above and below were well striped with numerous streaks of red, white, black, green, all colours of the rainbow, caused by the spittles of such as had found their mouths too much encumbered with pán or by some improvident