“The extent of ancient Pegue may still be accurately traced by the ruins of the ditch and walls that surrounded it; from these it appears to have been a quadrangle, each side measuring nearly a mile and a half; in several places the ditch is choked up by rubbish that has been cast into it, and the falling of its own banks; sufficient, however, still remains to show that it was once no contemptible defence; the breadth I judged to be about sixty yards, and the depth ten or twelve feet; in some parts of it there is water, but in no considerable quantity. I was informed, that when the ditch was in repair, the water seldom, in the hottest season, sunk below the depth of four feet. An injudicious _fausse-braie_, thirty feet wide, did not add to the security of the fortress. “The fragments of the wall likewise evince that this was a work of magnitude and labour; it is not easy to ascertain precisely what was its height, but we conjectured it at least thirty feet, and in breadth, at the base, not less than forty. It is composed of brick, badly cemented with clay mortar. Small equidistant bastions, about three hundred yards asunder, are still discoverable; and there had been a parapet of masonry; but the whole is in a state so ruinous, and so covered with weeds and briars, as to leave very imperfect vestiges of its former strength. “In the centre of each face of the fort there is a gateway about thirty feet wide, and these gateways were the principal entrances. The passage across the ditch is over a causeway raised on a mound of earth, that serves as a bridge, and was formerly defended by a retrenchment, of which there are now no traces. “It is impossible to conceive a more striking picture of fallen grandeur and the desolating hand of war, than the inside of these walls displays.... The temples, or praws, which are very numerous, were the only buildings that escaped the fury of the conqueror; and of these the great pyramid of Shoemadoo has alone been reverenced and kept in repair.”[198]