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the emporium of Yaman or Arabia Felix, for provisions and 
coals. Afterwards she proceeds to Muscat, the port of Oman, 
at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, from whence she goes on to 
Bushire, a Persian settlement, to discharge, and receive pas- 
sengers and cargo. When this is done the vessel proceeds to 
Basra, the Turkish port below the junction of the Euphrates 
with the Tigris, for the final outward discharge of her mer- 
chandize for the use of Southern Mesopotamia and Irak. 
15. I fear I have intruded at too great a length upon your 
time in giving you a somewhat long account of the different 
modes of travelling in that part of the East whereon my 
present paper treats ; but I deemed it both fitting and instruc- 
tive to preface my lecture with a short description of the routes 
that are at present traversed by modern travellers when wish- 
ing to visit the countries above alluded to, in order that you 
may with greater facility follow me in my last journey through 
Mesopotamia to Nineveh and Babylon. 
16. The expedition that I undertook to Assyria in 1878 
proved so pregnant with good results, that the trustees of the 
British Museum sent me out again to exhume more of the 
buried relics of the past, and although I was not so successful 
in this last expedition as I was on former occasions, by bring- 
ing to England large objects for the public gaze, I was, never- 
theless, fortunate in bringing to light interesting records of 
the old kings of Assyria and Babylonia, — such as Shalmaneser, 
Sennacherib, Sardanapalus, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, and others. 
As a matter of course, whenever I start on such expeditions I 
always make up my mind to bear disappointments, and to work 
against oppositions, prejudices, and jealousies ; but thanks to 
the energy and help of Sir Henry Layard, Her Majesty’s am- 
bassador at Constantinople, who has always been ready to 
support me, my task has been made easy through his personal 
influence with the Sultan of Turkey. Most fortunately for me 
I undertook the last two expeditions during his tenor of office 
in representing England at the Ottoman capital, and had he 
not been there I am certain the greater part of my discoveries 
would have been now buried underground. His first and 
greatest difficulty was to induce the Sublime Porte to forego 
some stringent rules which had been framed a few years back 
(regarding the research for antiquities) to prevent private ad- 
venturers from excavating and helping themselves to valu- 
able antiquities for their own benefit. Indeed some explorers, 
I was told at Constantinople, had actually entered into an 
agreement with the Turkish Government to give them half ot 
what was found, and that they had broken faith and smuggled 
