Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/137

 THE GREAT HISTORIC WALLS

��The walls of Derbent gird both the north and the south side of the town, running in two nearly parallel lines from sea to hill, in a direction slightly from northeast to southwest.^ The space between them at the strand, as I estimated, is about 500 yards ;^ but where the ramparts join the fortress, two miles or more back on the hill, at an elevation of about a thousand feet, the interval

���«ruli*mi Ei>Kr»i>ic Co.,N.;.

��Walls of Derbent After the Sketch Map of Erckert

is only about a hundred and fifty yards. ^ The city seems to stream down in a cascade between them ; * although in modern times, after enjoying the advantages of a hundred years of peace, it has begun to overflow considerably to the south beyond the wall on that side.

Both lines of rampart thrust their arms to the very edge of the

��1 This is shown also in the sketch map by Erckert, Kaukasus, p. 216, Leipzig, 1888, here reproduced.

2 I find this same distance given in the observations of Erckert, p. 219.

3Burrough (Hakluyt Soc. 1886,

��2. 463) gives 160 paces ; Erckert (p. 220), 140 paces.

graphic expression used by Alexandre Dumas, Impressions de voyage : Le Caucase, 1. 378, Paris, 1880.
 * ' Une cascade de maisons ' is the

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