JOHN ELDRED ad. 



1583. 

 have often beheld at my good leasure, having made 

 three voyages betweene the new city of Babylon and 

 Aleppo over this desert. Here also are yet standing 

 the ruines of the olde tower of Babel, which being 

 upon a plaine ground seemeth a farre off very great, 

 but the nerer you come to it, the lesser and lesser it 

 appeareth ; sundry times I have gone thither to see it, 

 and fouad the remnants yet standing above a quarter 

 of a mile in compasse, and almost as high as the stone- 

 worke of Pauls steeple in London, but it sheweth 

 much bigger. The bricks remaining in this most 

 ancient monument be halfe a yard thicke, and three 

 quarters of a yard long, being dried in the Sunne 

 onely, and betweene every course of bricks there lieth 

 a course of mattes made of canes, which remaine sound 

 and not perished, as though they had bene layed within 

 one yeere. The city of New Babylon joyneth upon New Babylon. 

 the aforsayd small desert where the Olde city was, and 

 the river of Tigris runneth close under the wall, and The r } ver 

 they may if they will open a sluce, and let the water lt S ns - 

 of the same runne round about the towne. It is above 

 two English miles in compasse, and the inhabitants 

 generally speake three languages, to wit, the Persian, 

 Arabian and Turkish tongues : the people are of the 

 Spaniards complexion : and the women generally weare 

 in one of the gristles of their noses a ring like a wed- [II. i. 270.] 

 ding ring, but somewhat greater, with a pearle and a 

 Turkish stone set therein : and this they do be they 

 never so poore. 



This is a place of very great traffique, and a very 

 great thorowfare from the East Indies to Aleppo. The 

 towne is very well furnished with victuals which come 

 downe the river of Tigris from Mosul which was called 

 Ninive in olde time. They bring these victuals and 

 divers sorts of marchandises upon rafts borne upon Rafts borne 

 goats skins blowen up ful of wind in maner of blad- u P on ^ a ^ en 

 ders. And when they have discharged their goods, they °^ g0 

 sel the rafts for fire, and let the wind out of their goats 



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