From end to end similar facades appeared, suggesting series of convents, barracks, or hospitals.

Extraordinary and painful was the impression produced by this town so suddenly immobilised whilst in course of erection.

It was as if on some accursed morning a wicked magician had with one touch of his wand stopped the works and emptied the noisy stone-yards, leaving the buildings in mournful abandonment.

Here on one side the soil had been banked up; there deep pits dug for foundations had remained gaping, overrun with weeds.

There were houses whose halls scarcely rose above the level of the soil; others which had been raised to a second or third floor; others, again, which had been carried as high as was intended, and even roofed in, suggesting skeletons or empty cages.