EDWARD RIGGS. 99 
which tends to reconcile one to not being able to reach the 
actual summit. About half way up the smooth face of 
this upper part of the rock is seen a tetrastyle temple cut 
into the solid rock. This is now wholly inaccessible, 
the path to it having been entirely obliterated by time, 
and the villagers have no tradition of any one’s having 
actually reached the highest point. Yet there, on the 
very top, stand the ruins of the innermost citadel of 
what was once undoubtedly a very strong castle. Its 
casemates, and walls, and bastions extend for some dis- 
tance down the rock, and a heavy gateway a short dis- 
tance above the village marks the lower limit of its 
fortifications. But who built it? What its date or pur- 
pose or history? Who can tell? There it stands; an 
embodied and unsolved enigma, giving the imagination 
free scope to account for its mysteries. 
This castle contains one striking feature which may be 
alluded to hereas characteristic also, of a number of other 
castles which we have yet to mention. It is a curious 
subterranean excavation, the purpose of which has been 
a Subject of discussion, some supposing that these exca- 
vations were intended for secret entrances and exits, or 
for means of communication with outside parties in case 
of siege, while others give other and more improbable 
explanations. If a humble opinion may be allowed, it 
may be suggested that Strabo not only explains their 
object, but in his mention of those he was familiar with, 
he throws a flood of light upon the date, for example, of 
this castle, where the same structure is found as that 
which he describes, carrying us back at least two thou- 
sand years to find the original designer of these castles 
and their underground works. He calls them vopeta- 
hydreia, that is, aqueduct or reservoir. Each of these— 
and they are found in all the castles of the kind which 
I have visited—consists of a large, deep, straight cut- 
ting, not perpendicular, but at about an angle of forty-five 
