Upon the gate leading to the outer town a lion, stuffed with cotton, is to be seen, it has oranges in the place of eyes, yawning like a seven-headed dragon, with a piece of red felt instead of a tongue, and teeth as sharp as Turcoman daggers or Arab lances. It measures from its nose to its tail forty-five spans. This mountain lion continued his havoc on the cattle of the neighbouring country for seven years, when it was killed by a brave man, and placed by the order of Ahmed Tapán upon the gate of his new built bezestán. It is a terrific beast, with feet resembling columns; it is not so beautiful as the lions of Baghdád, Helle, Jevazer and Kavarna, with their yellow coloured hair of a span’s length, like Angora-goats. Lions being generally the inhabitants of deserts, this one of the mountains deserves so much the more to be noticed. The mountains of this part, being all covered with thick forests, abound with leopards, lynxes, wild sheep, martens, wolves, foxes and jackals, and men are scarcely able to fetch wood from the mountains because they are so full of ferocious animals. A party of Cossacks, who had once pushed their inroads as far as these mountains, became the prey of wild beasts; intending to devour men’s goods they were themselves devoured, and ever since the town has enjoyed perfect security from the roving Cossacks, who availed themselves of the vicinity of the Black Sea. In this town I saw another marvellous thing, it was a boy standing before a barber’s shop with his father who begged alms; the boy was about eight or nine years of age with a stupendous head, like the heads of the people of A’ad and Themúd, like the head of Salsál (?) at Akgermán or like pumpkins of Adana and cabbages of Ván, on a neck no thicker than an arm, which not being capable of bearing such an enormous weight the head was supported by a wooden fork, which was fixed in the ground, and on it the weight of the head rested. This monstrous head, held up in this way before a barber’s shop, laughed in the faces of all who passed by. It had no turban but a kind of coarse saddle-cloth wrapped round it, the brows were of two fingers breadth extending to the ears, which were of human form, but of immense size, as were also the eyes, the lashes of which resembled arrows; the nose was somewhat of the shape of a Melonyena (Bádinján) of Morea, and when breathing, the nostrils were like those of a snorting horse; the mouth opened to such an astonishing width, that he was able to swallow at once a small water melon; of his teeth two were curved outside of the mouth towards the upper, and two downwards to the under lip; the lips were ruby-coloured but like the lips of a camel; the spittle was continually running out of his mouth. The physiognomy was that of a Kalmúk, and the hair crisped like that of black Arabs. The arms and breasts were those of a boy’s of his years, the fingers very thin and the feet like sticks. This was a case to apply the verse of the