NINEVEH

AND ITS REMAINS.

CHAPTER I.

FIRST JOURNEY IN ASSYRIA. ITS RUINS.- KOUYUNJIK, NIMROUD, AND KALAH SHERGHAT.-M. BOTTA'S DISCOVERIES.- KHORSABAD. - -RETURN TO MOSUL.

DURING the autumn of 1839 and winter of 1840, I had been wandering through Asia Minor and Syria, scarcely leaving untrod one spot hallowed by tradition, or unvisited one ruin consecrated by history. I was accompanied by one no less curious and enthusiastic than myself.* We were both equally careless of comfort and unmindful of danger. We rode alone; our arms were our only protection; a valise behind our saddles was our wardrobe, and we tended our own horses, except when relieved from the duty by the hospitable inhabitants of a Turcoman village or an Arab tent. Thus unembarrassed by needless luxuries, and uninfluenced by the opinions and prejudices of others, we mixed amongst the people, acquired without effort their manners, and enjoyed without alloy those emotions which

My travelling companion, during a long journey from England to Hamadan, was Edward Ledwich Mitford, Esq., now of her Majesty's civil service in the island of Ceylon.

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scenes so novel, and spots so rich in varied assoc fail to produce.

I look back with feelings of grateful delight t days when, free and unheeded, we left at dawn th tage or cheerful tent, and lingering as we listed, distance and of the hour, found ourselves, as the su under some hoary ruin tenanted by the wanderin some crumbling village still bearing a well-know experienced dragoman measured our distances a our stations. We were honored with no con pashas, nor did we seek any civilities from go neither drew tears nor curses from villagers by horses, or searching their houses for provisions: t was sincere; their scanty fare was placed before and came and went in peace.

I had traversed Asia Minor and Syria, visitin seats of civilisation, and the spots which religion h I now felt an irresistible desire to penetrate to th yond the Euphrates, to which history and tradition birthplace of the wisdom of the West. Most tra a journey through the usually frequented parts have the same longing to cross the great river, a those lands which are separated on the map from t Syria by a vast blank stretching from Aleppo to the Tigris. A deep mystery hangs over Assyria and Chaldæa. With these names are linked great great cities dimly shadowed forth in history; mig the midst of deserts, defying, by their very desolat of definite form, the description of the traveller; of mighty races still roving over the land; the f fulfilment of prophecies; the plains to which the Gentile alike look as the cradle of their race. in Syria the thoughts naturally turn eastward; treading on the remains of Nineveh and Babylon ou is incomplete.

Afte

I left Aleppo, with my companion, on the 18th

or servants. The road across the desert is at all times impracticable, except to a numerous and well-armed caravan, and offers no object of interest. We preferred that through Bir and Orfa. From the latter city we traversed the low country at the foot of the Kurdish hills, a country little known, and abounding in curious remains. The Egyptian frontier, at that time, extended to the east of Orfa, and the war between the Sultan and Mohammed Ali Pasha being still unfinished, the tribes took advantage of the confusion, and were plundering on all sides. With our usual good fortune, we succeeded in reaching Nisibin unmolested, although we ran daily risks, and more than once found ourselves in the midst of foraging parties, and of tents which, an hour before, had been pillaged by the wandering bands of Arabs. We entered Mosul on the 10th of April.

During a short stay in this town we visited the great ruins on the east bank of the river, which have been generally believed to be the remains of Nineveh.* We rode also into the desert, and explored the mound of Kalah Sherghat, a vast ruin on the Tigris, about fifty miles below its junction with the Zab. As we journeyed thither we rested for the night at the small Arab village of Hammum Ali, around which are still the vestiges of an ancient city. From the summit of an artificial eminence we looked down upon a broad plain, separated from us by the river. A line of lofty mounds bounded it to the east, and one of a pyramidical form rose high above the rest. Beyond it could be faintly traced the waters of the Zab. Its position rendered its identification easy. This was the pyramid which Xenophon had described, and near which the ten thousand had encamped: the ruins around it were those which the Greek general saw twenty-two centuries before, and which were even then the remains of an ancient city. Although Xenophon had confounded a name, spoken by a strange race, with one

* These ruins include the mounds of Kouyunjik and Nebbi Yunus.

familiar to a Greek ear, and had called the place tion still points to the origin of the city, and, by foundation to Nimrod, whose name the ruins now it with one of the first settlements of the human r

Kalah Sherghat, like Nimroud, was an Assy vast, shapeless mass, now covered with grass, scarcely any traces of the work of man except wh rains had formed ravines down its almost perper and had thus laid open its contents. A few fragi tery and inscribed bricks, discovered after a c amongst the rubbish which had accumulated arour the great mound, served to prove that it owed its to the people who had founded the city of which N remains. There was a tradition current amongs that strange figures carved in black stone still exi the ruins; but we searched for them in vain, durin part of a day in which we were engaged in explori of earth and bricks, covering a considerable exte on the right bank of the Tigris. At the time of country had been abandoned by the Bedouins, a occasionally visited by a few plunderers from the Aneyza tents. We passed the night in the jungle the banks of the river, and wandered during the day by the tribes of the desert. A Cawass, who had b us by the Pasha of Mosul, alarmed at the solitude, the hostile Arabs, left us in the wilderness, and t wards. But he fell into the danger he sought to fortunate than ourselves, at a short distance from ghat, he was met by a party of horsemen, and fe his timidity.

Were the traveller to cross the Euphrates to s ruins in Mesopotamia and Chaldæa as he had lef in Asia Minor or Syria, his search would be

* "He (Nimrod) went out into Assyria and builded Ni Rehoboth and Calah, and Resen, between Nineveh and Cala a great city." (Gen. x. 11, 12.)

graceful column rising above the thick foliage of the myrtle, ilex, and oleander; the gradines of the amphitheatre covering a gentle slope, and overlooking the dark blue waters of a lakelike bay; the richly carved cornice or capital half hidden by luxuriant herbage; are replaced by the stern shapeless mound rising like a hill from the scorched plain, the fragments of pottery, and the stupendous mass of brickwork occasionally laid bare by the winter rains. He has left the land where nature is still lovely, where, in his mind's eye, he can rebuild the temple or the theatre, half doubting whether they would have made a more grateful impression upon the senses than the ruin before him. He is now at a loss to give any form to the rude heaps upon which he is gazing. Those of whose works they are the remains, unlike the Roman and the Greek, have left no visible traces of their civilisation, or of their arts: their influence has long since passed away. The more he conjectures, the more vague the results appear. The scene around is worthy of the ruin he is contemplating; desolation meets desolation: a feeling of awe succeeds to wonder; for there is nothing to relieve the mind, to lead to hope, or to tell of what has gone by. These huge mounds of Assyria made a deeper impression upon me, gave rise to more serious thoughts and more earnest reflection, than the temples of Balbec and the theatres of Ionia.

In the middle of April I left Mosul for Baghdad. As I descended the Tigris on a raft, I again saw the ruins of Nimroud, and had a better opportunity of examining them. It was evening as we approached the spot. The spring rains had clothed the mound with the richest verdure, and the fertile meadows, which stretched around it, were covered with flowers of every hue. Amidst this luxuriant vegetation were partly concealed a few fragments of bricks, pottery, and alabaster, upon which might be traced the well-defined wedges of the cuneiform character. Did not these remains mark the nature of the ruin, it might have been confounded with a natural eminence. A long line of consecutive narrow mounds, still