Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/95

 having the small end of the pyramid turned inward and the broad base outward. No mortar was used, and thus the revetment presented a slightly irregular rubble face. The corners and angles were strengthened with large quoins of carefully squared ashlar work, usually bound together by strong cramps of iron or copper. Each escarpment was crowned by a series of loopholed curtain-walls, one and a half feet thick, ten in the outermost enclosure, and five in each of the inner; and between these walls, or parapets, there were trenches, twelve feet wide and eighteen feet deep, covered with bamboos and earth so as to constitute pitfalls. The parapets were eight feet high on the face, but had on the inner side a banquette approached by stone steps. In building these walls clay mixed with salt was used, an old recipe which gave a hard and durable composition. The general trace was irregular, having salient and re-entering angles for purposes of flank defence, and the salient angles were crowned with pagoda-shaped turrets from twenty to thirty feet high. Within the outermost moat the space enclosed was one hundred acres, and that within the innermost, namely, the keep (hommaru), measured twelve and a half acres. There were no buildings except guardhouses in the outer belt, but in the inner stood the residence of Hideyoshi as well as extensive barracks, and in the keep-enclosure were forty-seven fire-proof storehouses for provisions, fuel, arms, medicine, and other necessaries, and