The castle of Shabín Kara-hissár is of a heptagon form and stands on a high mountain, appearing like a man of war dismantled and dismasted. It is the work of an architect who was a second Ferhád. It is one of the twelve fortresses in the Ottoman Empire, which, not being commanded by the neighbouring heights, seem to have been built by the hand of Omnipotence. The height of the walls on all the seven sides is seventy cubits, with seventy bulwarks and seven hundred battlements. The whole circumference is three thousand six hundred paces; there is no ditch, it being surrounded by precipices. It has three strong gates where the garrison keep watch day and night, because the inhabitants of the villages along the shores of the Black sea send all their best goods into the castle to protect them from the inroads of the Cossacks; there are seventy houses with terraces, but they suffer from want of water, which is obliged to be brought upon asses from the river below; in case of siege they use the water kept in cisterns. The magazines are full of millet and rice, and have been for more than a century. As it is not a frontier fortress the artillery is neither heavy nor numerous. A small mosque bearing the name of Sultán Mohammed II., a khán, bath and market are in the lower town or suburb. This suburb, with gardens around it, consists of sixteen hundred terraced houses, the windows of which look towards the north; the courtyards are spacious. There are forty-two mosques, none of which are covered with lead, like those of the Sultáns at Constantinople; the one within the market place near the court of justice is much frequented: three convents, two baths, four kháns, seven schools for boys and an hundred and fifty shops; as this place does not lie on the great road, but on one side of it, its establishments are not very elegant. Tapán Ahmed Aghá began a new bezestán with eighty shops on both sides of the main street; it is sheltered by a roof against rain and foul weather, and protected by two gates on each side against thieves and bad men. Watchmen keep guard every night because many precious things are deposited there. _Description of a Lion._