Don Garcia is warm in his praise of ‘this rare yea and onely monument of the world (which farre exceedeth all the rest of the world’s miracles that we have seen or heard off).’ He found only twenty of the pillars left standing, but there were broken remains of many others close by; and half a league distant in the plain he noted another, and still farther off two short ones. He mentions the numerous bas-reliefs that ‘doe seele the front, the sides and the statlier parts of this building.’ The human figures are ‘deckt with a very comely clothing and clad in the same fashion which the Venetian magnificoes goe in: that is gownes down to the heeles with wide sleeves, with round flat caps, their hair spred to the shoulders and notable long beards.’ Some are seated in ‘loftier chayres’ with a ‘little footstoole neatly made about a hand high.’ He was particularly struck by the ‘hardnesse and durablenesse of these Marbles and Jaspers so curiously wrought and polished that yee may see your face in them as in a glasse.’ He was embarrassed to define the style of architecture, ‘whether Corinthian, Ionick, Dorick, or mixt.’ He called especial attention to ‘one notable inscription cut in a Jasper Table, with characters still so fresh and faire that one would wonder how it could scape so many ages without touch of the least blemish. The letters themselves are neither Chaldæan, nor Hebrew, nor Greeke nor Arabike, nor of any other nation which was ever found of old or at this day to be extant. They are all three-cornered, but somewhat long, of the form of a Pyramide, or such a little obeliske as I have set in the margin (△), so that in nothing doe they differ from one another but in their placing and situation.’ He notes that the threefold circle of walls said to have surrounded the castle ‘hath yielded to the time and weather.’ He mentions also the Tombs. ‘There stand,’ he says, ‘the sepulchres of their Kings placed on the side of that hill at the foote whereof the Castle itself is built.’ He did not himself visit Naksh-i-Rustam, but apparently his servants went, and ‘did see some horses of marble, large like a Colossus and some men also of giantly stature.’ This description is taken from a letter written by Don Garcia from Ispahan in 1619 to a friend at Venice. It was published at Antwerp in the following year, and appeared in English in 1625, in Purchas’ Pilgrims. A more detailed account is found in the ‘Embassy of Don Garcia,’ a work elaborated from his notes or memoirs by a member of his suite, and translated into French in 1667. It contains a very full, and on the whole accurate, description of the ruins. He noticed the irregular slope of the terrace, which he attributed to the exigencies of defence. The double staircase leading to the platform is so constructed that ‘one can easily ride up on horseback.’ On reaching the summit he noticed the Porch, the walls of which, he said, are supported by two great horses in white marble, larger than elephants,