This city is a place of prodigious force, being defended on every side by a good wall of red freestone and a ditch of thirty fathoms broad. The circuit of the walls is extreme extensive, and the streets very fine and spacious, though to our eyes the common houses and shops seem mean enough, and in divers cases the upper rooms, projecting out on either side of the way, do meet overhead in the midst, making, as it were, a vaulted passage for to go through. Of public edifices there is a prodigious quantity, and these so fair and stately as ’tis said no city in Asia can surpass them, both in the fashion of their architecture (which is after the Persian style), and the conveniency of their ordering. Chief among these in our opinion on our first arriving was the eighty _caravan-serawes_[108] or inns of the place, whereof we chose one, on the advice of them that knew the city well, and there took up our abode, finding therein such noble lodging as I had never imagined to myself. For these _caravan-serawes_ are many of ’em of three storeys high, with fine sets of rooms for travellers, together with good vaults and cellars for their goods, and suitable stabling for their beasts, and all the chambers opening one into another with private doors and galleries for the conveniency of those that occupy ’em. To each _caravan-serawe_ is there a keeper appointed, for the better safeguarding of the goods therein and the comfort of the travellers, and he, in return for the payment of a decent sum of money, will provide for you both forage for your beasts and victuals and firing for yourself, and all this with mighty care and respect. We then, having settled ourselves in this place, did send word to the emperor of our being come, and ask his permission to wait upon him for the presenting our letters of commendation, and did also send to certain Armenians that did represent the Honourable Company in this city, that they might come and examine the merchandises we had brought, and carry away musters of them for to show to them that dealt with ’em. And this business being ended, we did set to work to make ourselves at home (as they say), as being likely to spend some months in the place (for if Justice be slow anywhere, sure her course is scarce swift enough to be perceivable here), and so divided among ourselves the apartments that we held, taking each two chambers, very decent and seemly, and a part of the gallery before ’em.