This was the chamber of
the tombs of the kings, and its floor echoed to their footsteps, now
hollowly, now with ringing clearness. Three sides of the mighty hall
were lined with _loculi_ or niches, each as deep as the length of a
man. About the floor stood stone sarcophagi and beneath the long
flags kings were sleeping, each with his abandoned name graven on
the stones, washed year-long by the dark. In the room's centre was a
lofty cylindrical tomb, mounted by four steps, and this was the
resting-place of King Abibaal, the younger son of King Abibaal of
Tyre, and the brother to King Hiram, who ruled in Tyre when the
Phoenicians who settled Yaque, or Arqua, first passed the Straits of
Gibraltar and gained the open sea. ("Dear me," said Mrs. Hastings
when they told her, "I was at Mount Vernon once, and the
Washingtons' tombs there impressed me very deeply, but they were
nothing to these in point of age, were they?") Sunken in the wall
was a tomb of white marble hewn in a five-faced pyramidion, where
slept Queen Mitygen, who ruled in Yaque while Alexander was king of
Persia.
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