GiunniT bastions connected together by strong walls furnished with all A'ii° noi. kinds of military engines. The vast inclosure contained a palace for the use of the Grand Master and knights, a magnificent church, houses and offices for the serving brethren and hired soldiers, together with pasturages, vineyards, gardens, orchards, and fishponds. On one side of the walls was the salt sea, and on the other, within the camp, delicious springs of fresh water. The garrison amounted to four thousand men in time of war.* Considerable remains of this famous fortress are still visible on the coast, a few miles to the south of Acre. It is still called by the Levantines, Castel Pellegrino. Pococke describes it as " very magnificent, and so finely built, that it may be reckoned one of the things that are best worth seeing in these parts." " It is encompassed," says he, " with two walls fifteen feet thick, the inner wall on the east side cannot be less than forty feet high, and within it there appear to have been some very grand apartments. The offices of the fortress seem to have been at the west end, where I saw an oven fifteen feet in diameter. In the castle there are remains of a fine lofty church of ten sides, built in a light gothic taste : three chapels are built to the three eastern sides, each of which consists of five sides, excepting the opening to the church ; in these it is probable the three chief altars stood." f Irby and Mangles referring at a subsequent period to the ruins of the church, describe it as a double hexagon, and state that the half then standing had six sides. Below the cornice are human heads and heads of animals in alto relievo, and the walls are adorned with a double line of arches in the gothic style, the architecture light and elegant. • ** Opus egregiurn,'' says Jttmt* of Ktiry,** ubi tot ot tantas offbderunt di vitina, quod mirum est undo eas accipiunt."—Hist. Orient lib. iii. apud Geet. Dei, toni. L pam 9, p. 1131. Martene, torn. iii. col. 283. Hut. capt. Damieta?, apud Hist. Augi, script, XV . p. 437, 4311, where it is called Castrum Filii Dei. t I'ococke, Travels in the East, book i. chap. 15,