possible to destroy this connection, the fortress, perhaps, would have been impregnable till the invention of cannon; but Richard, unable to remove the only avenue existing, contented himself with deepening and rendering more frightful the gulfs which everywhere else isolated the rock from the rest of the earth. He then commenced his fortifications at the avenue.

of the fortress, was The courtine walls,1 from ten to fourteen.

The avant-corps was of a triangular form, the angles terminating in strong and lofty towers, and the sides defended by smaller towers. This enclosure was a hundred and forty feet long, and a hundred feet at the base of the triangle. The apex pointed to the avenue; and the tower at the extremity, being the head and front constructed with extraordinary care. as well as those of the towers, were feet thick. The whole triangle was surrounded by a ditch thirty feet wide at the bottom, dug in the solid rock. The counterscarp (or side of the ditch opposite the rampart,) was perpendicular; but on the other side the rock sloped backward, and thus the fortress appeared rising from a depth of at least fifty feet, in an attitude of extraordinary power and solidity."

Opposite the base of the triangle, a rampart nearly corresponding with it in appearance, being strengthened at the angles with two large towers, commenced the second enclosure, which embraced the whole of the rest of the rock. Within this line John Sans-Terre afterwards built a strong edifice, containing a chapel and magazines; and here, also, was the well of the fortress, descending, it is said, to the level of the Seine.

The walls running from tower to tower.

2 The ditch is still forty feet deep in one place, notwithstanding the fragments of the walls, which are heaped upon one another at the bottom.