RUINS OF RHEY. 
361 
wall of the city exteriorly, and at the mouth of the long and 
narrow glen, which I mentioned before as dividing the rock of 
the third citadel from the mountain, stands a round tower, 
similar in shape to this last described, but built entirely of stone, 
like the great fortress just above it. This tower is not so high 
as the one in the city, but equally open to the sky, and in 
diameter about thirteen yards. It has two hollow ways, be¬ 
ginning about thirty feet from the ground, and scooped in the 
wall itself, leading up to what must have been its battlements. 
Around its top, too, we find a Cuphic inscription, executed in 
brick. On the adjacent rock, amongst the remains of the stone 
citadel, stands a low circular building, decorated with various 
coloured tiles, evidently either a tomb, or some small Mahomedan 
religious edifice. The mouldering relics of two or three mosques, 
are discoverable amongst the hillocks of heterogeneous ruins, 
which cover the earth within the city walls . If, indeed, the area 
which those triangular sides embrace, may be deemed of suf¬ 
ficient extent to admit so high a title; its dimensions, at the 
broadest part, not being more than three British miles: a limit 
far too confined, to measure with the accounts given us by old 
writers, of the ancient extent of this capital, who compared 
it to nothing less than that of Babylon or of Nineveh. The 
Persians themselves say, that its magnificence and trade were 
so great, that fifteen thousand caravansaries were too few for the 
reception of the merchants, and travellers, who resorted to its 
bazars ; and came from afar, to admire the wonders of the city. 
Hence, though we may not give implicit belief to the whole of 
this abundant enumeration, by the Persian writers, yet, from the 
corresponding evidence of graver pens, it does not appear 
credible, that the remains of the ramparts which we see now, 
3 A 
VOL. I. 
