It is generally known that Alexander having designed to build the dike of Gog and Magog, when he arrived at this place, thought of executing a project for uniting the Caspian with the Black Sea, by means of a canal which was to join the Caspian Sea with the Phasus; but being advised by his Vezírs of the danger of this union, as the Black Sea was a great deal lower than the Caspian, he left it unexecuted, and built three immense walls with three ditches as a stronghold between the Black and Caspian Seas, and as a line of defence against the Bení Assfar Sala’at, Rús, and the people of Crimea and Kipchák. These triple walls, on Mount Caucasus in the mountains of Irák Dadián, with triple ditches, I, poor Evliyá, saw, and which all those who travel from Crimea into the country of the Kúmúks also see; by the lapse of time some of the towers are in ruins and the ditches choked up with earth. The author of the History of Tophet pretends that the Caspian Sea issues by subterraneous canals cut by Alexander into the Phasus, but this is an evident blunder, as I can most positively assert, because when I saw the Phasus on my journey to the siege of Assov, I found its water clear and fresh, while that of the Caspian Sea is so salt and bitter, that it burns a man’s skin if used for purification. This is a case for applying the Persian proverb; “Where is hearing, and where is seeing?” We have already mentioned in our journey to Trebisonde, that Alexander built a strong castle on the shores of the Black Sea at the mouth of the Phasus, and on the shores of the Caspian he built this gate of gates or iron gate. _Size and figure of the Castle._