At the back of the palace a road
of extraordinary width stretched away up the hill for a distance
of a mile and a half or so, and appeared to terminate at an open
space surrounding the gleaming building that crowned the hill.
But right in front of us was the wonder and glory of Milosis
-- the great staircase of the palace, the magnificence of which
took our breath away. Let the reader imagine, if he can, a splendid
stairway, sixty-five feet from balustrade to balustrade, consisting
of two vast flights, each of one hundred and twenty-five steps
of eight inches in height by three feet broad, connected by a
flat resting-place sixty feet in length, and running from the
palace wall on the edge of the precipice down to meet a waterway
or canal cut to its foot from the river. This marvellous staircase
was supported upon a single enormous granite arch, of which the
resting-place between the two flights formed the crown; that
is, the connecting open space lay upon it. From this archway
sprang a subsidiary flying arch, or rather something that resembled
a flying arch in shape, such as none of us had seen in any other
country, and of which the beauty and wonder surpassed all that
we had ever imagined. Three hundred feet from point to point,
and no less than five hundred and fifty round the curve, that
half-arc soared touching the bridge it supported for a space
of fifty feet only, one end resting on and built into the parent
archway, and the other embedded in the solid granite of the side
of the precipice.
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