Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/143

Rh of the Imperial Commissioner to explore the citadel, which I have been in vain trying to enter for six months; but at his word the iron door flew open like magic, and the obsequious commandant showed us every part of the fortress. I found little of interest except an inscription, in which the name of Francis Gatelusio occurs, and the date 1373. This inscription is over the gate called Orta Capou. It is as follows:—

It is inscribed on an oblong stone divided into four compartments, thus:—On the right a double-headed spread eagle, crowned. Next a monogram; next the bearing of the Gatelusio family—a shield papillouné; lastly, the above inscription.

The Francesco Gatelusio mentioned in this inscription was one of a noble Genoese family, which we find in possession of Ænos, in Thrace, about the middle of the 13th century. By a treaty in 1352, the Byzantine emperors ceded to the Genoese in Pera many commercial rights and privileges, and it must have been very soon after this treaty that Francesco Gatelusio sailed from Genoa with two well-armed galleys, on a roving expedition in the Black Sea.

At Tenedos he fell in with John Palæologos, then