213 
tractors to enter my service, and prevailed upon liim to let his 
men work for me, promising him that they should have all 
the plain bricks they found in the diggings but all other 
antiquities must be made over to me. I then sent for the 
rest of the brick-diggers and spoke to them as to the ad- 
visability of working for me and preventing any complications 
occurring by digging separately themselves. I told them 
that I was willing to employ them, and allow them to take all 
the bricks that they wanted without incurring any expense 
themselves. This offer put them in a fix, as they found they 
had no excuse then to say that I was preventing them from 
pursuing the avocation they were brought up in. The result . 
was that they all, without a dissentient voice, agreed to my 
proposal, and forthwith they went to work for me, and they 
have continued to do so cheerfully and faithfully ever since. 
65. I learned afterwards that the poor Arabs received very 
little for the antiquities they sold to the Jewish and Armenian 
brokers. I found that what a broker asked £5 or £10 for 
— an inscribed terra-cotta — he had only paid the poor Arab 
discoverer one or two shillings. An inscribed marble slab, 
which was said to have been found at Kala Shergat, which a 
native of Mossul sold to a French consul for four shillings the 
late Mr. George Smith had purchased for seventy pounds. 
66. The present visible ruins of Babylon consist of a 
section called “ Babel,” as already mentioned ; Imjaileeba, 
(the site of the palace of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar), 
Omran, and Jimjima. The two last-mentioned localities 
look as if they had been occupied by the royal retinue and 
household. With the exception of Birs Nimroud there is 
nothing on the Syrian side of the Euphrates, beyond a faint 
tracing of some walls, to show the extent of the western limit 
of Babylon. 
67. If anyone wants to be convinced how literally and 
truthfully the different prophecies about the utter destruction 
of Babylon have been fulfilled, he has only to visit that 
country and see with his own eyes the complete desolation of 
what was once upon a time called in Holy Writ “ the glory of 
kingdoms.” Indeed the destruction of that city was so 
complete that one wonders whether the accounts given of its 
greatness and magnificence by different Greek and other 
historians were not rather exaggerated ; but the words of God 
cannot fall to the ground, as one of the great prophets* did 
predict that “ the beauty of the Chaldee's excellency shall be 
VOL. XIV. 
* Isaiah xiii. 19. 
Q 
