The wall of the fort is about 14 feet thick at the base, 9 feet thick at the top and 18 feet high, exclusive of the parapet. The parapet is 2½ feet thick at the base, 9 inches at the crest and 7½ feet in height. It is loop-holed and crowned with the ruins of small battlements which, like so much attaching to Herat, have been permitted to crumble away. In several places the walls have broken down, the repairs subsequently effected adding to the general insecurity of what has remained rather than improving the original breaches. The width of the pathway behind the parapet is 6 feet; but there are many gaps, and continuity of communication is preserved only by the severe physical exertion of flying leaps. Their condition renders them ill-adapted to the employment of artillery, while the ramps leading up to this pathway are barely broad enough to admit the passage of a single man. At one time this wall was flanked by small exterior towers, placed at intervals of 100 feet. They varied in size and are now so generally in ruin that it is difficult to estimate their dimensions. In their original state they were probably from 40 to 60 feet in diameter, the larger towers being 30 feet in width and projecting 25 feet. In contrast with the containing wall of the city the wall of the fort possesses an outward inclination, equal perhaps to one-seventh of its height. The slope of the towers is generally greater; many of them are splayed at the base to accommodate their foundations to the sloping surface upon which they rest. The whole work appears originally to have been constructed of sun-dried brick, backed with layers of moist earth. Some of the towers have foundations and facings of rough stone or burnt brick, laid in mud. The wall itself is a very old one; stone, brick and earth have been used indiscriminately, so that it now presents a patchwork appearance. [Illustration: THE IRAK GATE] The interior slope of the mound, upon which the walls stand, is steep and from the base of the wall drops perpendicularly into the town. No attention whatever appears to have been paid to this part of the fortifications. The inhabitants of the city have been for several generations in the habit of removing earth from it for the construction or repair of their dwellings. At one time, too, houses were erected close to the foot of the rampart and also upon it, the slope being excavated to admit of the walls being erected against it. A partial collapse of the mound has followed, the fallen masses of earth serving as a convenient resting-place for the dead.