File:Nineveh and Babylon - a narrative of a second expedition to Assyria during the years 1849, 1850, and 1851 (1882) (14580818487).jpg

Identifier: ninevehbabylonna00laya (find matches)
Title: Nineveh and Babylon : a narrative of a second expedition to Assyria during the years 1849, 1850, & 1851
Year: 1882 (1880s)
Authors: Layard, Austen Henry, Sir, 1817-1894
Subjects: Nineveh (Extinct city) Babylon (Extinct city) Middle East -- Description and travel
Publisher: London : J. Murray
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ered by a river navi-gable for nearly six hundred miles, has been turned into adesert and a wilderness, by continued misgovernment, op-pression, and neglect. Our tents were pitched near a pool of rain water, wliich,although muddy and scant, sufficed for our wants. Thereare no springs in tliis part of the plain, and the Bedouins areentirely dependent upon such temporary supplies. The re-mains of ancient villages show, however, that water is not IV.) ENCAMPMENT IN THE DESERT. 87 concealed far beneath the surface, and that wells once yieldedall that was required for irrigation and human consumption.The loads had not yet been fairly divided amongst thecamels, and the sun had risen above the horizon, before theBedouins had arranged them to their satisfaction, and wereready to depart. The plain of Zerga was carpeted with ten-der grass, scarcely yet forward enough to afford pasture forour animals. Scattered here and there were tulips of abright scarlet hue, the earliest flower of the spring.
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Our first Encampment in the Desert. A ride of three hours and a quarter brought us to a secondline of limestone hills, the continuation of the Tel Afer andSinjar range, dividing the small plain of Zerga from the trueMesopotamian desert. From a peak which I ascended totake bearings, the vast level country, stretching to the Eu-phrates, lay like a map beneath me, dotted with mounds, butotherwise unbroken by a single eminence. The nearest and 88 NINEVEH AND BABYLON. (Chap. most remarkable group of ruins was called Abou Khameeraand consisted of a lofty, conical mound surrounded by asquare inclosure, or ridge of earth, marking, as at Kouyunjikand Nimroud, the remains of ancient walls. From the footof the hill on which I stood there issued a small rivulet,winding amongst rushes, and losiVig itself in the plain. Thisrunning water had drawn together the black tents of the Je-hesh, a half sedentary tribe of Arabs, who cultivate the landsaround the ruined village of Abou Maria. Their flocks gra

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