Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 14, 2025
The town is walled round, with thirty watch-towers at proper distances on the walls; and the castle with its towers, being very white, makes an august show at a distance, being surrounded with little hills on both sides of the bay or river, covered with wood. But when you cross the ferry and come into the town, there is nothing but poverty and misery.
Then, between the castles, at smaller intervals still, were turrets, used as watch-towers and posts for sentinels. Thus the whole line of the wall was every where defended by armed men. The whole number thus employed in the defense of this extraordinary rampart was said to be ten thousand.
Alas! but I had the glass at my side, and for me nepenthe was mixed with a despair immense as the vault of heaven, my good God: for anon I would take it up to spy some perched hut of the peasant, or burg of the 'bonder, on the peaks: and I saw no one there; and to the left, at the third marked bend of the fjord, where there is one of those watch-towers that these people used for watching in-coming fish, I spied, lying on a craggy slope just before the tower, a body which looked as if it must surely tumble head-long, but did not.
There are five other watch-towers of similar form, which stand on different sides of the city at the distance of a mile or two, and generally upon an eminence overlooking the country. They were erected several centuries ago to discern from afar the approach of an enemy, and protect the caravans of merchants, which at that time traveled from city to city, from the attacks of robbers.
The Moabede is, by its situation, and the pursuits of its inhabitants, so much separated from the city, that a woman here had not entered the town for the last three years, as she herself assured me; although the Bedouin females walk about the valley with freedom. The valley of Mekka has here two outlets: on the north side is a narrow passage, defended by two watch-towers: it leads to Wady Fatme.
The pirates had increased in numbers during the wars between Marius and Sylla in a very alarming degree. They had built, equipped, and organized whole fleets. They had various fortresses, arsenals, ports, and watch-towers all along the coasts of the Mediterranean. They had also extensive warehouses, built in secure and secluded places, where they stored their plunder.
Hence it may naturally be supposed, that within these watch-towers was to be found most of the nautical knowledge of the time; that here were deposited such observations on the heavenly bodies as were attainable at that early period; also rude charts of the coast, originally perhaps traced upon the walls, and afterwards formed into primitive maps by being transferred and extended upon papyrus leaves.
The lantern watch-towers of a baronial castle were placed in juxtaposition with Doric columns employed for chimneys, while under oriel windows might be observed Italian doorways with Grecian pediments.
Joseph was well fortified with palisades, on which, at intervals, were wooden watch-towers. On an evening of this same summer of 1645, the Iroquois approached the place in force; and the young Huron warriors, mounting their palisades, sang their war-songs all night, with the utmost power of their lungs, in order that the enemy, knowing them to be on their guard, might be deterred from an attack.
Prearranged signals were used to convey news in even earlier times. Fire, smoke, and flags were used by the Egyptians and the Assyrians previous to the Trojan War. The towers along the Chinese Wall were more than watch-towers; they were signal-towers. A flag or a light exhibited from tower to tower would quickly convey a certain message agreed upon in advance.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking