ees which grew around it appear in the engraving, and one is left
growing on the top of the lower range, with its gnarled roots binding
the front wall and obstructing the doorway, but no words and no drawing
could convey a true idea of the solemnity of its living shroud, or of
the impression made upon us when the ring of the axe first broke the
stillness that had so long prevailed around. The building, including
the wings, measures at its base one hundred feet in length. The grand
staircase is thirty feet wide, with twenty-four steps, and a
substantial balustrade on each side, still in good preservation, gives
it an unusually imposing character. In the doorway are two columns,
making three entrances, with square recesses above them, all of which
once contained ornaments, and in the centre one fragments of a statue
still remain. The interior is divided into two corridors, each
twenty-six feet long; the one in front is six feet six inches wide, and
had at each end a stone bench, or divan; and again on the walls we
found the mysterious prints of the red hand.[4]

A single doorway leads to the back corridor, which is nine feet wide,
and has a stone bench extending along the foot of the wall. On each
side of the doorway are stone rings, intended for the support of the
door, and in the back wall are oblong openings, which admit breezes
from the sea. Both apartments have the triangular-arched ceiling, and
both had a convenience and pleasantness of arrangement that suited us
well as tenants.

The wings are much lower than the principal building. Each consists of
two ranges, the lower standing on a low platform, from which are steps
leading to the upper. The latter consists of two chambers, of which the
one in front is twenty-four feet wide and twenty deep, having two
columns in the doorway, and two in the middle of the chamber
corresponding with those in the doorway. The centre columns were
ornamented with devices in stucco, one of which seemed a masked face,
and the other the head of a rabbit. The walls were entire, but the roof
had fallen; the rubbish on the floor was less massive than that formed
in other places by the remains of the triangular-arched roof, and of
different materials, and there were holes along the top of the wall, as
if beams had been laid in them, all which induced us to believe that
the roofs had been flat, and supported by wooden beams resting upon the
two columns in the centre. From this apartment a do