630 
REMARKS IN ILLUSTRATION 
and particularly at the season of the year when every thing puts 
on its summer-garb. The gold and silver arising from the sti¬ 
pulated tribute, would, probably, be paid into the treasury of the 
king; and the gratuitous offering alone, brought into the royal 
presence at the festival. Hence, we find the most valuable ani¬ 
mals the tributary countries could produce, the horse, the sheep, 
the bull, the dromedary, and the gour, the wild inhabitant of the 
desert, so precious in the eyes of a Persian prince as an object of 
chase. Others present specimens of manufactures, in articles of 
dress and arms ; and some carry vessels of honey, perfume, and 
spices. Yet it is likely that all the vases and bowls we see in 
the hands of the provincials, were not appropriated to holding 
these lighter kinds of oblations, but were of themselves ad¬ 
ditional gifts of the most weighty materials, masses of gold or 
silver in those portable forms. Herodotus mentions its having 
been a custom in the East, to melt the pure metal, and pouring it 
into earthern vessels, when the liquid gold or silver cooled and 
became solid, the mold was broke, and the metal came out in 
the shape it had received. (Herod, lib. iii. c. 96.) Counting the 
number of groups which fill the space between every two 
cypresses, I found eighteen on this face of the wall, and two at 
the commencement of the slope on the steps, which makes up 
exactly the twenty governments into which Darius divided his 
empire; a coincidence we may regard an additional corrobor¬ 
ation of the idea, that these bas-reliefs represent the delegated 
tributaries of that partition. 
Two of the cuneiform, or arrow-headed inscriptions on this 
part of the platform, have been so far translated by Professor 
Grottefund, as to shew that Darius is the subject of both. One 
