Search for winter sunbeams in the Riviera, Corsica, Algiers, and Spain (1880) (14582288079)

Identifier: searchforwinter00coxs (find matches)
Title: Search for winter sunbeams in the Riviera, Corsica, Algiers, and Spain
Year: 1880 (1880s)
Authors: Cox, Samuel Sullivan, 1824-1889
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton & company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress



Text Appearing Before Image:
d by him. Parapets and spandrils,gates and cisterns, fountains and courts—all bespeakthe Orient, though the Moors have not been here fornearly four hundred years ! The tower of the mosqueis yellow. Many additions and subtractions havebeen made. It is in good repair, although it has beenshattered by hurricane and by war. You may have agood view of the city and its environs from its dizzyheight. Very little of the buzz of life comes up frombelow; for there is no buzz when there is no busi-ness. You are curious to see the twenty roofs of themosque, and these are duplicated on the other side ofthe court. You then descend ; for your curiosity asto the mosque is to be gratified only by going inside.Let us enter! One feature of this mosque—or cathedral—is at 386 History of the Mosque. once apparent. It is supported by 1096 monolithiccolumns! These are of every variety—the red Granadamarble, the twisted Byzantine porphyry, the yellowFrench marble, &c. It once had 1200 columns, but
Text Appearing After Image:
Mosque of Cordova. there remain enough to confuse the vision, were therenot great symmetry in size and position. Viewed fromsome angles, the maze of pillars looks like a forest ofneatly-trimmed trees. This mosque was built out ofthe materials of an old Gothic temple, upon whose A Christian ironed to a pillar for 25 years, 387 site it stands, though many of the columns, like thoseof the great mosque at Constantinople, came fromother temples. The Pagan and Christian world wasransacked to prop and furnish this mosque. It wassecond only to Mecca and Jerusalem in the Moham-medan realm. It was copied from that of Damascus.It was not finished till the tenth century, though beguna.d. 786. At first glimpse the roof looks low; infact, it is only 3$ feet high. It is very unlike, there-fore, in solemn grandeur, to the Gothic arch andvault. It looks lower than it is, as the area is so great.That is 3$6 by 394 feet. All the decorations of side-chapels, all the burning tapers, all the pictorial arra