A Journey into the Interior of the Earth by Jules Verne

Stapi is a village consisting of about thirty huts, built of lava, at / the south side of the base of the volcano. It extends along the inner / edge of a small fiord, inclosed between basaltic walls of the / strangest construction.

Basalt is a brownish rock of igneous origin. It assumes regular / forms, the arrangement of which is often very surprising. Here nature / had done her work geometrically, with square and compass and plummet. / Everywhere else her art consists alone in throwing down huge masses / together in disorder. You see cones imperfectly formed, irregular / pyramids, with a fantastic disarrangement of lines; but here, as if / to exhibit an example of regularity, though in advance of the very / earliest architects, she has created a severely simple order of / architecture, never surpassed either by the splendours of Babylon or / the wonders of Greece.