216 Present Slate of Ike Ruins of Babylon. 



I paced the circumference, and found the four faces amount to 

 nine hundred paces, or 2,250 feet : the slope, as you descend the 

 face, is gradual, and generally ensv. We might not have mea- 

 sured it exactly at the same place ; but the difference which ap- 

 pears between us is immaterial, as a lapse of two centuries may 

 in all probability have occasioned considerable alterations. The 

 altitude of the south-west angle, which is the loftiest part of the 

 whole, is computed at two hundred feet. I had no means of as- 

 certaining the truth of this, but should imagine it is fully that 

 height. Delia Valle mentions two kinds of bricks, furnace-baked 

 and sun-dried ; and Beauchamp met only with the former. I saw 

 both these, and another sort of deep-red, apparentlv high-baked, 

 the colour of an English l)rick. This latter is in the greatest 

 abundance at Niebuhr's watch-tower, and generally has an in- 

 *cription on it, but in a small character. 1 could not procure 

 any of this kind whole ; they were always in small pieces. The 

 tower of Bclus, the mound opposite to it, and the watch-tower, 

 had these two kinds used in their construction ; but the large 

 clay sun-dried brick was to be found only at Belus's tower, the 

 whole interior body of which was composed of it ; and the em- 

 ployment of reeds and bitumen as a cement, appears to have been 

 but seldom introduced in other parts of the ruins, except at the 

 one denominated the tower of Eelus, where it was universally 

 seen as the cement for the sun-dried brick, and at every course; 

 v/hereas, at Aggurkeef, near Bagdad, which is certainly a Baby- 

 lonish building, it is found at every sixth, seventh, and eighth 

 course, though the same sort of brick is used in the building. 

 The reeds and bitumen were evidently but seldom used with the 

 furnace-baked, which I observed most generally cemented with a 

 thin layer of lime and sand. The dimensions of the bricks were 

 • — clay sun-dried, four inches seven-tenths thick, seventeen inches 

 and a half broad ; furnace baked, three inches thick, twelve inclies 

 broad, and generally weighed thirty-one pounds. 



" The Euphrates, as far as Kerna, which is one hundred and 

 twenty miles from the head of the Persian Gulf, is navigable for 

 vessels of three hundred tons, and from thence to Hillah, boats 

 not exceeding eighty can come up during six months in the year. 

 Their construction is singular : they have one very large mast 

 with a latteen sail; the body almost a half-moon, no keel, and 

 a rudder of the most awkward shape : the hull is extremely 

 ill constructed, the ribs and planks being roughly nailed together, 

 and the outside covered with bitumen. When they are going to 

 Korna or Bussora from Hillah, they sail if the wind be fair, or 

 float down the stream if it be foul. In returning or ascending 

 the stream, they have one end of a long rope tied to the head of 



' the 



