340 THE PULSE OF ASIA
seaport, called Sokona, or Aboskun (Water of Oskun, or Sokona), at the mouth of the Gurgen River. The site of Aboskun is marked by the ruins of Gumush Tepeh, or Silver Hill, from which the so-called " Red Wall," a great bulwark against the Huns, stretches eastward to the mountains in a line of mounds a hundred and fifty miles long. The Caspian Sea, to quote Rawlinson, " must have been at a very low level when Aboskun and the great wall were first commenced, if it be true, as the Russian surveys report, that remains of masonry along the line of the wall can be traced below water eighteen miles from the shore." O'Donovan and Eichwald also speak of the wall, and of a caravanserai of Aboskun which now lies under water. The most reliable and ancient Persian tradition, according to Rawlinson, relates that the wall was built by the Sassanian king, Firuz, against Kiyataleh, between A. D. 459 and 484.
At Derbent, on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, four hundred and fifty miles from Aboskun, there is a great wall of the same sort, supposed to have been built in the fifth or sixth century of our era. Its base is said to be slightly under water. In the bay of Resht, according to Bruckner, there are houses of unknown date standing in the sea, although they certainly were built on dry land ; and Sokolof relates a Persian account of the ruins of a submerged city near the mouth of the Kur, or Cyrus River. Finally, at Baku we saw the towers of a well-preserved caravanserai projecting above the water some distance from the shore. Their base lies fifteen feet below the level which Bruckner has taken as zero in his investigations of the fluctuations of the sea. Lenz believes that the caravanserai dates from before
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