94 RUINED CASTLES IN ASIA MINOR. 
a long siege by the Russians in 1855, during the Crimean 
war, was at last reduced only by starvation, and in 1877 
was carried by assault by the same enemy, after many 
efforts and at a terrible cost of life. By the settlement 
which followed the latter warin 1878, this much-coveted 
prize was allowed to remain in the hands of Russia. 
But the castles which, like this one, are still held as 
highly important by modern military art, are the excep- 
tions, and are rendered worthy of such distinction by 
some peculiar advantage of position or construction. 
The great mass of those elaborate structures on which 
past ages have expended such untold energies, stand 
now, splendid relics of a bygone age, but substantially 
useless for modern practical purposes. 
Asia Minor is full of such wholly or partially aban- 
doned castles. They were the pride and dependence of 
former times, and much skill and taste were displayed 
in the choice of sites for them. Perched on abrupt and 
lofty eminences they look down with patronizing dig- 
nity at the clustered dwellings at their feet, and have in 
many cases decided the location and even the character 
of a town. The geological structure of the country 
favored this passion for castle-building—mountainous 
and rugged, and full of abrupt cliffs and deep gorges, it 
furnished matchless sites ready to the hand of feudal 
lord or military ruler. In many instances the conver- 
gence of two mountain streams has determined the lo- 
cation of a settlement. These streams in long ages have 
cut themselves deep channels leaving between them a 
narrow and precipitous rock. This being seized upon 
by the military instinct of some local authority, a castle 
is the result, and this in turn causes the growth of the 
village into a city. In other cases in the very midst of 
some broad aliuvial plain a huge rock will stand, like 
an island in the sea, as abrupt as Dumbarton castle or 
Gibraltar, and nearly as high. On this some local chief 
