RUINS OF A CITY ON THE MOUNTAINS. 
629 
Other historians mention a fortress called Gorneas, as having 
long existed in this country ; hence, I conclude it to be the same 
just described by the Armenian writer; and that instead of the 
king building it, he only strengthened its works, and adorned it 
with added structures. Mithridates, the father-in-law of Tigranes 
the Second, during the revolt of Rhadamistus shut himself up 
in a fortress of this name, then considered impregnable from its 
natural situation, and having the advantage of a Roman garrison. 
Some curious remains of the ancient implements of attack are 
yet visible near the mouldering walls on the plain to the north, 
namely, rough stone balls of a diameter exceeding our largest 
shells. They never could have been ejected from guns, there¬ 
fore must have found their way thither from the more complex 
machinery we read of in the oldest arts of war. 
Reyond the northern wall, towards the mountain plain, appear 
ruins of the deepest interest; the remains of a city, to which 
the people of the country give the name of Gurney. These 
venerable relics stretch to a great extent, exhibiting the walled 
foundations of long and diverse ranges of houses, and the more 
lofty ruins of five churches ; all in a style of building evidently 
of a different period to that of the fortress. The architecture of 
the sacred edifices is precisely the same with that of the mo¬ 
nastery of Eitch-mai-adzen, which gives them a date of full a 
century after the erection of the pillared structure on the rock. 
Defensive walls and towers may be traced round a space likely to 
have been the city boundary, to a square of a thousand yards. 
About nine or ten families of the poor unsettled mountaineers 
have crept into some of the arched recesses of these crumbling 
mansions of departed greatness ; deforming the stately shapes of 
ancient architecture, with a variety of rude appurtenances for their 
