232 
another trial in the same mound, I should certainly have 
attempted another expedition to it, though I might have been 
buried in the sand again ! 
In that part of Babylon called Imjaileeba we have always 
been finding records of the past ; but, the more I dig there, 
the more puzzled I am what to make of it. With, the excep- 
tion of half-a-dozen rooms 1 discovered on the borders of what 
was once a grand palace of the kings of Babylon, where 
Belshazzar was supposed to have lost his life when the capital 
of Chaldea was captured by Cyrus, I could find no regular 
structure to enable me to identify any part of the different 
buildings which must have existed at the time. The whole 
place seemed to have been uplieaved or overthrown by an 
earthquake or some other supernatural destruction. In some 
places objects of antiquity were found almost within a foot of 
the surface, and in other parts, not more than a few yards 
further, we come upon Babylonian relics almost as deep as the 
former foundation. At one time I thought I had hit upon 
some ancient walls to enable me to penetrate with a definite 
object into the interior of a regular building, but was soon 
doomed to be disappointed, because, what I thought at first 
sight to be a regular Babylonian building, was found after 
wards to have belonged to a ruder period, when the Parthians 
occupied the country. 
Every time I returned to that country I did all in ray power 
to trace the original outskirts of the city, but the more I tried 
to come to any definite result, the more I was confounded : and 
so with regard to the discussion about the topography of 
Babylon between Mr. Rich and Major Rennell, which increased 
my difficulty not a little ; and whether I followed the theory of 
one or the other, I felt that I was driven nowhere. 
The only positions which can now be fixed upon with any 
accuracy are, I think, the palace of the kings of Babylon, 
called Kasr or Imjaileeba, the temple of Belus, known as Birs 
Nimroud, and the hanging gardens, which the Arabs call 
Babel, but which Rich and other travellers erroneously styled 
Imjaileeba. 
A broken terra-cotta cylinder was discovered in my ex- 
plorations at Babylon which Sir Henry Rawlinson deciphered 
and found to contain an account of the taking of that 
city by Cyrus as it is mentioned by Herodotus and Holy 
Writ; but, unfortunately, a good deal of it is missing. From 
the reading of this imperfect record we can now not only 
fix the year in which that memorable impious feast described 
by the Prophet Daniel took place, but even the month and 
day of its occurrence. According to the deciphering of this 
