In vast mountainous and rocky regions is built our great city called Montalluyah, that is, “God’s own City.”

What are called the External World Cities are built on the base sides and summits of many peaked mountains, rocks, hills, and promontories, girded, intersected, and undermined by the sea.

The City is divided into 200 districts each known by a name indicative of the situation:—­

     The Upper Mountain City,
     Summit City,
     Topmost Point City,
     The Lower City,
     Down City,
     Side City,
     Lower Under City,
     Sea City,
     Vale City,
     Ravine City,
     Side Country,
     The Internal City,

and similar designations.

Before my reign each of these districts formed a separate city.  Great or rather petty jealousies existed between them, and much evil was the result; for they treated each other as rivals, and often as enemies.  I decreed that all the districts should be called by one name, that the inhabitants of all should enjoy the same system of laws and government, the same customs and polity, and form as it were one family.  I did many things to cement the union.  I executed, too, numerous great works which assisted in promoting the growth of universal brotherhood.  Many cities which formerly lay at immense distances from each other, separated by intervening mountains of immense height, I united by perforating the rocks, and building spacious galleries through the hearts and bases of the mountains, and by throwing “aerial” bridges from one mountain peak to another.  Henceforth I shall speak of all these cities as “Montalluyah.”

Palaces and edifices of various forms, their gilded spires and minarets inlaid with many coloured transparent stones which sparkle in our brilliant sun, stand on undulating sinuous ridges, peaks, and terraces, rising one above the other in endless and irregular succession.

The houses are mostly curved, oval, or round.  In Montalluyah straight lines are avoided.  The houses are built principally with a white stone, mingled with a peculiar stone of a bright sky-blue colour, both stones repellent of heat.

Gardens and verdure separate the houses one from the other.  Most of the gardens are arranged in curvilinear lines, the houses being placed at the central point of the inner and outer curve alternately, so that each alternate house is on the outer centre of the garden curve, and each alternate house is on the inner centre of the adjoining curve.  The undulating lines of terraces are broken by gigantic masses of rock of various colours, red, green, golden, white, blue, silver, brown, and variegated—­rocks of carbuncle, lapis lazuli, malachite, gold-stone, and many-coloured marbles.

These rocks and undulations are intersected by ravines, rivers, inlets of the sea, lakes, and cataracts, reflecting the many tints of the gorgeously coloured sky and the rays of our vividly bright sun, filling our city as it were with aureoles of glory.