Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/188

152 serpent, and as large as the head of a lamb. This head was certainly on the gate as late as the year 1829, and seems to have been taken down when the gate was repaired, some time previous to 1837.$66$

This is, perhaps, the same head which Thevenot saw, 1657, and which he thus describes:—"Elle était beaucoup plus grosse et plus large que celle d'un cheval, la gueule fendue jusqu'aux oreilles, de grosses dents, les yeux gros, le trou des narines rond, et la peau tirant sur le gris blanc." According to the tradition in Thevenot's time, and which has been preserved in Rhodes ever since, this was the head of the great serpent slain by Dieudonné de Gozon in the fourteenth century.$67$

Passing through this gate, a vaulted passage leads through the counterscarp over a second and third fosse, which defend the palace of the Grand Master on the west. After crossing the third fosse, the road enters the Castello between the church of St. John and the palace of the Grand Master opposite to the upper end of the street of the Knights. This street, which runs east and west, divides the Castello into two nearly equal parts.

At its western extremity has been a beautiful vaulted building, of which the single remaining arch is given in Plate 8.

In Rottier's time several of these arches were standing. On the south of this building is the chm'ch of St. John the Baptist, which seems to have been enlarged and altered by successive Grand Masters, and was probably founded by Foulques de Villaret on the first establishment of the Knights at