Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/182

150 cent. The fortifications with which it is encircled, both by sea and land, extend from the round tower on the eastern side of the entrance to the great harbour to the tower of St. Nicholas, at the mouth of Port Mandraki.

On the land side the town is defended by a wall of circumvallation, and a fosse cut out of the native rock, which, being easily quarried, affords the same facilities for making fortifications which the Knights afterwards found at Malta. The fosse is from 40 to GO feet deep, and in width from 90 to 140 feet. The escarp and counterscarp are built of squared stones of moderate size, which were probably quarried out on the spot. In some places the fosse is doubled. The terreplein of the walls is 40 feet wide. Here still remain many of the fine old brass guns of the Knights, on which the fleur-de-lis, the basilisk of Francis I., and other heraldic badges, may be recognized. The vents are protected from the weather by old cuirasses taken out of the armoury of the Knights. Everywhere the immense stone balls lie about the ramparts. Many of these have been used to repair the breaches in the walls. In the towers, bastions, and other works by which these lines are strengthened in various places, the military engineer may trace the first germs of that science of fortification which has been developed pari passu with the improvement in artillery, and which in the fifteenth century seems to have been more advanced in the Levant than in Europe.

All round the great harbour the town is defended by a wall with square towers at intervals: this wall is