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Updated: June 18, 2025
In the gable is a traceried rose, above which is an elaborate cornice with beasts' heads projecting at the angles, shell niches, and floral finial, and at the meeting-point of the ramps a bust of an elderly woman in the costume of the fourteenth century, with hair in curls at each side of the face, a jewelled circlet, pleated gown with tightly fitting sleeves slashed and embroidered, and a border round the neck above a laced under-garment.
Their feet would become entangled in the plants that a luxuriant nature allowed to grow amid the joints of the stones, flocks of birds would fly away at their approach; all the sculptures seemed to serve as resting-places for their nests, and every hollow in the stone where the rain-water collected was a miniature lake where the birds came to drink; sometimes a large black bird would settle on one of the pinnacles like an unexpected finial; it was a raven who settled there to plume his wings, and it would remain there sunning itself for hours; to the people who saw it from below it appeared about the size of a fly.
After building a stone-man on the finial of the Jebel el-Ghal, and a short rest in the north-western Wady, we remounted and struck seawards. Some ugly divides led us, after half an hour, to a broad Fiumara, well grown with palm-bush, the veritable Wady el-Ghal.
Between the inner and outer round moulding is as usual a hollow filled with branches. The outer moulding, on its upper side, throws out the most fantastic curves and cusps, which with their finials nearly encircle two little round windows, and then in wilder curves push up through the square framing at the top to a finial just below the window.
On each side of these windows, in the space between the windows and the vaulting shafts, is plain stone panelling terminating in an arch with a crocketed gable above it, ending in a finial which reaches to about the level of the spring of the window arch. On each side of this gable are grotesque carved figures.
Beyond a hollow moulding enriched with square flowers are thick twisted shafts, which are carried up to form a hood-mould following the curves of the opening below, and having at each angle a large radiating finial. Besides these additions Dom Manoel made not a few changes in the older part of the palace.
This arch is further connected with the gable by a rib running horizontally through the crown of the gable, and below this rib, on each side of the gable, are circles quatrefoiled. From the finial at the top of the gable rise three ribs running to the top of the arch above.
Something like a small white flame in the sky was the carved white coral finial on the gable of the mosque which had caught full the rays of the sun. A multitude of gay streamers, white and red, flew over the half-concealed roofs, over the brilliant fields and amongst the sombre palm groves. But it might have been a deserted settlement decorated and abandoned by its departed population.
Each of the five domes bore on its summit, as a sort of finial, the figure of a winged serpent, half of its body being arranged in a coil, while the other half, with outstretched wings, was upreared in a graceful curve.
He has a most sincere love for his profession, a heartily honest enthusiasm for pixes and piscinas; and though he will never design so much as a pix or a piscina thoroughly well, yet better than most of the experimental architects of the day. Employ him by all means, but on small work. Expect no cathedrals from him; but no one, at present, can design a better finial.
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