It is a thousand feet long and two hundred wide, all of the most symmetrical, and at the same time the most ponderous masonry.

The massive towers and bastions are more than thirty feet high, and have been sixty.

From the mountain's peak its broken turrets rise above the groves of ancient oaks and olives, and look wonderfully picturesque.

It is of such high antiquity that no man knows who built it or when it was built.
It is utterly inaccessible, except in one place, where a bridle-path winds upward among the solid rocks to the old portcullis.

The horses' hoofs have bored holes in these rocks to the depth of six inches during the hundreds and hundreds of years that the castle was garrisoned.