Dervish standing in the entrance, but his eyes were lifted in heavenly abstraction, and he did not see me.  The interior was brilliantly lit by white and colored lamps, suspended from the walls and the great central dome.  It was an imposing structure, simple in form, yet grand from its dimensions.  The floor was covered with kneeling figures, and a deep voice, coming from the other end of the mosque, was uttering pious phrases in a kind of chant.  I satisfied my curiosity quickly, and we then returned to the khan.

Yesterday afternoon I made a more thorough examination of the city.  Passing through the bazaars, I reached the Serai, or Pasha’s Palace, which stands on the site of that of the Sultans of Iconium.  It is a long, wooden building, with no pretensions to architectural beauty.  Near it there is a large and ancient mosque, with a minaret of singular elegance.  It is about 120 feet high, with two hanging galleries; the whole built of blue and red bricks, the latter projecting so as to form quaint patterns or designs.  Several ancient buildings near this mosque are surmounted with pyramidal towers, resembling Pagodas of India.  Following the long, crooked lanes between mud buildings, we passed these curious structures and reached the ancient wall of the city.  In one of the streets lay a marble lion, badly executed, and apparently of the time of the Lower Empire.  In the wall were inserted many similar figures, with fragments of friezes and cornices.  This is the work of the Seljook Kings, who, in building the wall, took great pains to exhibit the fragments of the ancient city.  The number of altars they have preserved is quite remarkable.  On the square towers are sunken tablets, containing long Arabic inscriptions.

The high walls of a ruined building in the southern part of the city attracted us, and on going thither we found it to be an ancient mosque, standing on an eminence formed apparently of the debris of other buildings.  Part of the wall was also ancient, and in some places showed the marks of an earthquake.  A long flight of steps led up to the door of the mosque, and as we ascended we were rewarded by the most charming view of the city and the grand plain.  Konia lay at our feet—­a wide, straggling array of low mud dwellings, dotted all over with patches of garden verdure, while its three superb mosques, with the many smaller tombs and places of worship, appeared like buildings left from some former and more magnificent capital.  Outside of this circle ran a belt of garden land, adorned with groves and long lines of fruit trees; still further, the plain, a sea of faded green, flecked with the softest cloud-shadows, and beyond all, the beautiful outlines and dreamy tints of the different mountain chains.  It was in every respect a lovely landscape, and the city is unworthy such surroundings.  The sky, which in this region is of a pale, soft, delicious blue, was dotted with scattered fleeces of white clouds, and there was an exquisite play of light and shade over the hills.