KASR, OR PALACE. 
361 
matting, have never yet been found here, even in breaking up 
any of its walls; though impressions of the (now mouldered) 
intersecting weavings of the straw remain perfectly legible on 
the pitchy covering of the bricks. How faithfully do these 
vestiges agree with the method of building in Babylon, as de¬ 
scribed by Herodotus ! He observes, that the bricks intended 
for the walls were formed of the clay dug from the great ditch 
that backed them: they were baked in large furnaces; and in 
order to join them together in building, warm bitumen was 
used; and between each course of thirty bricks, beds of reeds 
were laid interwoven together. The bitumen (he continues to 
tell us) is drawn from certain pits in the neighbourhood of Is, 
a town on the Euphrates. These pits exist to this day ; the 
town in their vicinity now bearing the name of Hit or Heet; it 
lies about four days journey north-west of Bagdad, and is on the 
western bank of the river. 
The older such evidence is, the better; since it comes nearer 
to the time when these materials were collected, and the struc¬ 
tures raised, which we now gaze at with a double astonishment; 
contemplating the skill of the erection, with the sublime dura¬ 
bility of the fabric. One of the most ancient of these witnesses 
is the venerable historian I have quoted last; and to him I shall 
refer again, in comparing the present vestiges of the great 
fortified palace, with the representations of what it was. That 
Diodorus Siculus has placed the great palace on the western 
side of the river, does not bring any unanswerable argument 
against its being on the east. He never was on the spot; and 
Babylon, he owns, had been long abandoned to the wilds, when 
he wrote. He, therefore, could draw his information from 
written authorities only : his choice seems to have particularly 
3 a 
VOL. II. 
