The strength of the fortress struck him as remarkable. Standing on an elevated rock, built of massive masonry, with guns peeping from every elevation, it commanded the country far and near. The city, from the centre of three sides of which the rock rises, the rock forming the fourth side, sheer and unassailable, was four and a half miles in circumference. It was surrounded by a massive wall, from six to eight feet thick, varying in height from eighteen to thirty feet, having numerous flanking bastions armed as batteries, and was garrisoned by 11,000 men, commanded by a woman who possessed all
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