. Nineveh and Babylon : a narrative of a second expedition to Assyria during the years 1849, 1850, & 1851. tiles, richly-coloured glass and other relics that mark the site of Baby-lonian ruins. The dry beds of canals everywhere crossedour path, and limited our The parched soil outsidethe swamp has become fine sand, amidst which small tufts ofthe hardy tamarisk form the only vegetation. These bushes,thus standing alone, were turned by the mirage into forests,whilst the embankments of the old watercourses seemedlike ranges of hills. After two hours ride we emerged from the labyrinth ofdry
. Nineveh and Babylon : a narrative of a second expedition to Assyria during the years 1849, 1850, & 1851. tiles, richly-coloured glass and other relics that mark the site of Baby-lonian ruins. The dry beds of canals everywhere crossedour path, and limited our The parched soil outsidethe swamp has become fine sand, amidst which small tufts ofthe hardy tamarisk form the only vegetation. These bushes,thus standing alone, were turned by the mirage into forests,whilst the embankments of the old watercourses seemedlike ranges of hills. After two hours ride we emerged from the labyrinth ofdry canals, and ascending a heap of rubbish covering someancient ruin, we beheld, looming on the horizon like distantmountains, the principal object of my journey—the mounds 312 NINEVEH AND BABYLON. [CHAP. of Niffer. They were still nearly ten miles from us. Mag-nified as they were by the mirage they appeared far to ex-ceed in size and height any artificial elevation that I hadhitherto seen. To the east of us rose another great ruin,called Zibbliyah, a lofty, square mass, apparently of sun-dried Heads of Arab Delouls. We rode along the dry bed of a wide canal, passing hereand there the former sites of Bedouin encampments, markedby the heaps of dry camels dung, the blackened stones onwhich the cauldron had been heated, and the narrrowtrenches dug to carry off the winter rain. The tents latelypitched on these spots belonged to the Shammar Arabs, whohad wandered thus far to the south, and after having plun-dered all the tribes not strong enough to resist them, werenow on their way back to the spring pastures in northernMesopotamia. The Bedouins cannot, it is said, remain tothe south of Baghdad after the month of February, as theircamels would be destroyed by eating a poisoryous herb whichat that season of the year begins to grow plentifully in thedesert. We saw many tracks of lions in the sand, somenot many hours old. Flocks of pelicans whitened the plain j XIL] RUINS OF NI
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, bookidninevehbabyl, bookyear1882
