354 
RUINS OF BABYLON. 
following bearings: Hillah S. 5° W.; Birs Nimrood S. 25° W. ; 
Mujelibe N. 10° W. But I must observe, that I do not allow 
for the magnetic variation of the needle. 
I employed my men in digging, to find an entire brick from 
near the surface of the red mound, but without success; and my 
reason for the search, was to get possession of one complete speci¬ 
men of a singular difference, discoverable on these fragments, re¬ 
specting the manner of their inscription, when compared with any 
I had before seen. Those were always on the broad face of the 
brick, these were only along its edge, consequently could not be 
more than three or four lines ; but the characters did not appear 
to vary in the least from those in the more abundant writing. 
This red cone rises immediately to the west of the northern end 
of the ridge of mound marked E, and unites with a vast range 
of unequal elevations, branching out into a thousand ramifica¬ 
tions (H); the whole collection covering a space, in a direction 
due south, of more than a mile in length, and a quarter of a 
mile in breadth. This multitude of mounds are all inferior in 
height to the conical mount; but they correspond with the mean 
elevation of another extensive group of mounds (I), which ex¬ 
tend along the eastern face of the Kasr, and spread thence to 
the north for three quarters of a mile; covering at the same 
time, almost the whole ground to the river, lying between the 
northern face of the Kasr, and the highest point of the river’s 
embankment at a. These mounds are what Major Rennel, in 
his Remarks on the Topography of Ancient Babylon, imagines 
to have been the ruins of the lesser palace mentioned by Dio¬ 
dorus Siculus as having been divided from the greater by the 
Euphrates; hence, our venerable geographer, to support his 
idea, supposes that the river has altogether changed its course in 
this vicinity. The learned, at a distance from the real ground 
