312 
BIRS NIMROOD 
other places erected out of her spoils, these inscribed bricks 
are seen facing in all directions. While on the summit of the 
Birs, I examined many of the fine brick fragments which lay 
near the foot of the piece of standing wall, to see whether 
bitumen had been used any where in their adhesion, but I could 
not trace the smallest bit. The cement throughout was lime, 
spread in a very thin layer, not thicker than a quarter of an 
inch, between each brick and its neighbour ; and, thin as this 
cement was laid, it contained a spreading of straw through the 
midst of it. The standing piece of ruin is perforated in ranges 
of square openings ; through which the light and air have free 
passage. The latter admission may have been deemed necessary 
to preserve the interior of the building from the abiding in¬ 
fluence of damp. For, that this tower-like relic is a remains of 
what formerly constituted a part of some interior division of the 
great pile itself, I shall presently attempt to shew. At the foot 
of this piece of wall, on its southern and western sides, besides 
the minor fragments I have just mentioned as having inspected 
in search of bitumen, lay several immense unshapen masses of 
similar fine brick-work; some entirely changed to a state of 
the hardest vitrification, and others only partially so. In many 
might be traced the gradual effects of the consuming power 
which had produced so remarkable an appearance; exhibiting 
parts burnt to that variegated dark hue, seen in the vitrified 
matter lying about in glass manufactories ; while through the 
whole of these awful testimonies of the fire, (whatever fire it 
was!) which, doubtless, hurled them from their original eleva¬ 
tion, the regular lines of the cement are visible, and so hardened 
in common with the bricks, that when the masses are struck 
they ring like glass. On examining the base of the standing 
