KASR, OR PALACE. 
365 
when walking on the highest terrace of the gardens of his palace; 
which he had raised to so mighty a pile, as to overlook even the 
walls of Babylon ! 
The whole structure, we are told by Herodotus, comprising 
this splendid palace, stood in the centre of one of the divisions of 
the city; and as the same account informs us that the situation 
was near the river, the meaning of this centre must be the 
middle of one of the faces of the city which fronted the river. 
Thus far the palace and the gardens, as to what they were: I 
shall now proceed to what they are ; not doubting that their 
remains really exist in what we now call the hill of the Kasr, 
and its huge adjacent mound. A few pages back, I shewed 
the aspect of these ruins when Mr. Rich visited them seven 
years ago : my own account will convince my reader of the 
daily bewildering mutations of particular features ; while the 
body remains still a stupendous outline, though mouldering to 
decay; and, indeed, by such slow degrees, that perhaps its last 
dust may not fall till it mingle with the wreck of the world. 
I have already stated its present dimensions; and that its 
whole exterior is one mass of rugged surface, and deeply ca- 
verned hollows. The piles of wall, to which the natives have 
more peculiarly given the name of the Kasr, or Palace, still 
stand in striking remnants, from 16 to 18 feet above the ge¬ 
neral line of the broken summit. Parts of them are so con¬ 
nected as to give indications of their having originally formed 
several square piers, or supports, rather than distinct ranges of 
chamber or tower walls. Their thickness, in general, measures 
from eight to nine feet; and their materials are so strongly 
cemented, that, in spite of the bricks being the hardest of any 
I had hitherto met with, I found they would not bear detaching 
