by him the Embankment, which extends 750 yards along the river, and, bending to the eastward, is continued beyond the village of Jumjuma, till, farther east, it crosses the road from Hillah to Bagdad. The whole area included within these rampart-like mounds is two miles and 600 yards from east to west, and two miles 1000 yards from north to south. It is again cut nearly in half, longitudinally, first, by a straight dike, like the boundary, but of less magnitude, of which only a mile in length remains; and there is to the west of this a still smaller and shorter ridge, which terminates to the north in a high heap of rubbish of a red colour, nearly 300 yards long and 100 broad, but containing few whole bricks. All these, and the rest of the ruins hereafter to be described, consist of mounds of earth formed by the decomposition of buildings channelled by the weather, and the surface of them strewed with pieces of brick, bitumen, and pottery,

Beyond the southern enclosure or embankment, which affords little interest, and proceeding towards the north, is found the first grand mass of ruins, which, in consequence of having upon it a small domed building, said to be the tomb of a son of Ali named Amran, has been named the Hill of Amran. Its figure approaches that of a quadrangle, of about 1100 yards long and 800 broad, very irregular in height, but rising in the highest part from fifty to sixty feet above the plain. It has been much dug into for the purpose of procuring bricks; but there is nothing in its appearance to require a more particular description. On the north of this mound there is a valley of 550 yards in length, covered with tufts of rank grass, and crossed by a low ridge of ruins. To this succeeds the second important class of remains, which form nearly a square of 700 yards in length and breadth, and are connected with the mounds of Amran by a bank of considerable height, and nearly 100 yards in breadth. This square, named the Kasr or Palace, Mr. Rich considers as the most interesting part of the Babylonian ruins, as all that can be seen of it attests its having been composed of buildings far superior to any which have left traces in the eastern quarter. The bricks are of the finest description, and, notwithstanding the immense quantities of them that have been carried off, they appear still to be abundant. But the search for them has caused farther dilapidation and confusion, by burrowing into the mound,

and cutting it into ravines in all quarters, so that it is impossible to guess at the original plan of the structure. In these excavations, walls of burned brick and excellent mortar are constantly met with, and fragments of alabaster vessels, fine earthenware, marble, and great quantities of varnished tiles, the glazing and colouring of which are surprisingly fresh. He found in a hollow a sepulchral urn of earthenware, and near it some human bones, which pulverized with the touch. One ravine, hollowed out by explorers, ran into its substance near 100 yards by thirty feet wide, and forty to fifty deep, displaying on one side some yards of a perfect wall, the front, no doubt, of some building; the other, an utterly confused mass of rubbish, as if the way had been made through a solid structure. At the south end was found a subterraneous passage, floored and walled with large bricks laid in bitumen, and covered over with blocks of sandstone a yard thick and several yards long. It was half full of brackish water, is nearly seven feet in height, and, the workmen said, increased farther on so much in size that a horseman might pass through it. The superstructure over it is cemented with bitumen; in other parts of the ravine mortar has been used; and all the bricks have writing on them. At the northern end of this cavity, Mr. Rich, in consequence of hearing from an old Arab of an image or idol of black stone having been seen, set some men to excavate, and disinterred a lion,* rudely sculptured in dark gray stone, and of colossal dimensions, standing on a pedestal.

A little to the west of the ravine is a pile of building, consisting of several walls and piers, which face the cardinal points, eight feet in thickness, in some places ornamented with niches, and in others strengthened by pilasters and buttresses built of fine burned brick, still perfectly clean and sharp, laid in lime cement of such tenacity that those whose business it is to find bricks have given up working on account of the extreme difficulty of extracting them whole. The tops of those walls are broken, so that they may have originally been much higher. This remarkable ruin is by the natives called the Kasr or Palace, which appellation has been used to distinguish the whole

*This lion, having been again disinterred, and examined by the officers of the Euphrates expedition, has been pronounced to be an elephant, of which the trunk is broken off.

quadrangular mass. A little to the north-northeast may be seen the singular tree, the only one found near these remains, said by the Arabs to have flourished in ancient Babylon, and to have been miraculously preserved to afford Ali a convenient place to tie up his horse after the battle of Hillah. It is thought to resemble the lignum vitæ ; but it is, in fact, a peculiar species of tamarisk.

Mr. Rich then describes the embankment on the riverside, which is separated on the east from those of Amran and the Kasr by a winding valley or ravine 150 yards broad, the bottom of which is covered with nitrous efflorescence, and apparently never had any buildings on it. The face of the mound to the river-side is abrupt and perpendicular, having been cut by the action of the water, and exposes at the top a number of urns filled with human bones, which have not undergone the action of fire. The river has encroached here, as fragments of masonry are seen in the water beneath the bank.

The other mounds within this space deserve little attention, as they present no remarkable appearance; but the huge mass farthest north requires particular notice. It is called by the Arabs Mukalibé or Mujelibé, the first of which words means the "overturned," a term which, Mr. Rich observes, is sometimes applied to the Kasr. The second, Mujelibé, has been rendered "the place of captivity," from jalib, "a captive;" and is supposed to identify the place as the prison in which the Israelites were confined. It is of an oblong shape, but irregular in its sides, which face the cardinal points-the northern one being 200 yards in length, the southern 219, the eastern 182, and the western 136. Its height is still more unequal, but at the highest point, which is the southeastern angle, it measures 141 feet. Near the summit of the western face, which is the least elevated part, there appears a low wall with interruptions, built of unburned bricks mixed up with chopped straw or reeds, and cemented with clay-mortar of great thickness, having between every course a layer of reeds. On the north side there are vestiges of a similar construction. The southwestern angle is crowned by something like a turret or lantern; the other angles are in a less perfect state, but may once have been similarly ornamented. All its faces are furrowed by the weather, and in some parts ploughed to a very great depth. The top is

covered with heaps of rubbish, in digging into some of which layers of broken bricks cemented with mortar are discovered, and entire ones with inscriptions may here and there be found; the whole being interspersed with innumerable fragments of pottery, bitumen, pebbles, vitrified scoria, and even shells, bits of glass, and mother-of-pearl. There were dens of wild beasts in several parts; and Mr. Rich perceived in some a strong smell like that of a lion. Bones of sheep and other animals, with abundance of porcupine quills, were seen in the cavities, with numbers of bats and owls. It is a singular coincidence, that here, for the first time, he became aware of the belief held by the natives as to the existence of satyrs-animals like men from the waist upward, but having the thighs and legs of a goat. It is added, they hunt them with dogs, and eat the lower part, abstaining from the upper portion of the figure on account of its resemblance.

Having heard that a coffin of mulberry-wood, containing a human body, swathed in tight wrappers and partially covered with bitumen, had been observed in a passage which leads into the interior of the mound, he set twelve men to work, in order to uncover the cellar to which it leads. They dug into a shaft or hollow pier sixty feet square, lined with brick laid in bitumen and filled with earth, in which they got a brass spike, some earthen vessels, and a beam of date-tree; and, after three or four days' toil, and making their way through several passages, lined chiefly with fine bricks, but exhibiting also some that were unburned, they found a wooden coffin, containing a skeleton in high preservation. Under the head of it was a round pebble, on the outside a bird, and in the inside an ornament of the same material, which had probably been suspended to some part of the corpse. A little farther on was seen the skeleton of a child. No doubt can be entertained of their antiquity.

Such are the principal remains on the eastern side of the river. Upon the western, Mr. Rich found but one object worthy of much attention; and, indeed, on looking to that quarter from the height of the Mujelibé, none else was to be seen. The ruin in question was the Birs Nimrod, by far the most interesting and gigantic of the whole that underwent his examination. This huge and venerable pile,

which is situated about six miles* southwest of Hillah, is a mound of an oblong figure, the total circumference of which is 762 yards. The eastern side is cloven by a deep furrow, and is not more than fifty or sixty feet high; but the opposite side rises in a conical figure to an elevation of 198, and is crowned by a solid pile of brickwork, thirtyseven in height by twenty-eight in breadth, diminishing in thickness to the top, which is broken and irregular. It is rent by a fissure to a great extent, and is also perforated by square holes, disposed in rhomboids. The fine bricks of which it is built have inscriptions on them; and so admirable is the cement by which they are fastened, and which appears to be lime-mortar, that, though the layers are so close together that it is difficult to discern what substance is between them, it is nearly impossible to extract one of them whole. The other parts of the summit are occupied by immense fragments of brickwork, of no determinate figure, tumbled together, and converted into solid vitrified masses, as if they had undergone the action of the fiercest fire, or been blown up with gunpowder, the layers being still perfectly discernible: a curious fact, and one for which Mr. Rich professes himself quite unable to account.

The whole of the mound on which those fragments are deposited is itself a ruin, channelled by the weather, strewed also with the usual debris, as well as with pieces of black stone, sandstone, and marble. In the eastern face, layers of unburned brick are plainly to be seen, but no reeds were discernible in any part, and in the north side may be observed traces of building exactly similar to the brick pile. At the foot of the mound a step is observed, scarcely elevated above the plain, but exceeding in extent, by several feet each way, the true or measured base; and there is a quadrangular enclosure around the whole, as at the Mujelibé, at once much more perfect and of greater dimensions. At a trifling distance from the Birs, and parallel with its eastern face, is a mound, not inferior to that of the Kasr in elevation, but much longer than it is broad. On its top are two small oratories, one of which is called Makam Ibrahim ul Khaleel; and around the Birs to a considerable extent are traces of smaller elevations.

This very remarkable ruin, more striking from its utter By some of the officers of the Euphrates expedition it is considered to be ten or eleven.