Chapter 14

He did not choose death, and followed the orthodox standard of the Prophet in fierce campaigns against the Wahabees. Returning to Cairo in triumph from his Holy Wars, Osman began to flourish in the world, acquired property, and became effendi, or gentleman, giving pledge of his sincere alienation from Christianity by keeping a couple of wives. The strangest feature in Osman's character was his inextinguishable nationality. In his house he had three shelves of books, and the books were thoroughbred Scotch! He afterwards died of the plague, of which visitation one-half of the whole people of the city, 200,000 in number, were carried off. I took it into my pleasant head that the plague might be providential or epidemic, but was not contagious, and therefore I determined that it should not alter my habits in any one respect. I hired a donkey, and saw all that was to be seen in the city in the way of public buildings--one handsome mosque, which had been built by a wealthy Hindoostanee merchant, and the citadel. From the platform of the latter there is a superb view of the town. But your eyes are drawn westward over the Nile, till they rest upon the massive enormities of the Ghizeh pyramids. At length the great difficulty which I had in procuring beasts for my departure was overcome, and with two dromedaries and three camels I and my servants gladly wound our way from out the pest-stricken city.

Of course, I went to see and explore the pyramids of Ghizeh, Aboucir, and Sakkara, which I need not describe. Near the pyramids, more wondrous and more awful than all else in the land of Egypt, there sits the lonely sphinx. Upon ancient dynasties of Ethiopian and Egyptian kings, upon conquerors, down through all the ages till to-day, this unworldly sphinx has watched like a Providence with the same earnest eyes, and the same sad, tranquil mien. And we shall die, and Islam will wither away, and the Englishman, leaning far over to hold his loved India, will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile and sit in the seats of the faithful, and still that sleepless rock will lie watching and watching the works of the new, busy race with those same sad, earnest eyes, the same tranquil mien everlasting.

I accomplished the journey to Suez after an exciting adventure in the desert. There are two opinions as to the point at which the Israelites passed the Red Sea. One is that they traversed only the very small creek at the northern extremity of the inlet, and that they entered the bed of the water at the spot on which Suez now stands. The other is that they crossed the sea from a point eighteen miles down the coast.

From Suez I crossed the desert once more to Gaza, and thence to Nablous and Safet--beautiful on its craggy height. Thereafter, for a part of two days, I wound under the base of the snow-crowned Djibel El Sheik, and then entered upon a vast plain. Before evening came there were straining eyes that saw, and joyful voices that announced, the sight of the holy, blessed Damascus. This earthly paradise of the Prophet is a city of hidden palaces, of copses and gardens, fountains and bubbling streams.

The path by which I crossed the Lebanon is like that of the Foorca in the Bernese Oberland, and from the white shoulder of the mountain I saw the breadth of all Syria west of the range. I descended, passing the group of cedars which is held sacred by the Greek Church. They occupy three or four acres on the mountain-side, and many of them are gnarled in a way that implies great age; but I saw nothing in their appearance that tended to prove them contemporaries of the cedars employed in Solomon's temple. Beyrout was reached without further adventure, and my eastern travel practically ended.

AUSTEN HENRY LAYARD

Nineveh and Its Remains

_I.--Mosul and its Hidden Mysteries_

Sir Austen Henry Layard, the most famous of all Oriental archæological explorers and discoverers, was born in Paris, on March 5, 1817, and died on July 5, 1894. Intended for the English legal profession, but contracting a dislike to the prospect, he determined to make himself familiar with the romantic regions of the Near East, and travelled in all parts of the Turkish and Persian Empires, and through several districts of Arabia. The desire came upon him to investigate the mysterious mounds on the great plains of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and he began that series of excavations which resulted in the most sensational discoveries of modern times, for he unearthed the remains of the long-buried city of Nineveh. With the marvellous, massive, and sublime sculptures of winged, human-headed bulls and lions, and eagle-headed deities, he enriched the galleries of the British Museum, England thus becoming possessed of the finest collection of the kind in the world. Layard's two volumes, "Nineveh and Its Remains" (1848) and "Monuments of Nineveh" (1850), are unique records of special enterprise and skill.

During the autumn of 1839 and winter of 1840, I had been wandering through Asia Minor and Syria, scarcely leaving untrod one spot hallowed by tradition, or unvisited one spot consecrated by history. I was accompanied by one no less curious and enthusiastic than myself--Edward Ledwich Mitford, afterwards engaged in the civil service in Ceylon. We were both equally careless of comfort and unmindful of danger. We rode alone; our arms were our only protection; and we tended our own horses, except when relieved from the duty by the hospitable inhabitants of a Turcoman village or an Arab tent.

We left Aleppo on March 18, took the road through Bir and Orfa, and, traversing the low country at the foot of the Kurdish hills, reached Mosul on April 10.

During a short stay in the town we visited the great ruins on the east bank of the river which have been generally believed to be the remains of Nineveh. We rode into the desert and explored the mound of Kalah Shergat, a vast, shapeless mass, covered with grass, with remains of ancient walls laid open where the winter rains had formed ravines.

A few fragments of ancient pottery and inscribed bricks proved that it owed its construction to the people who had founded the city of which the mounds of Nimroud are the remains. These huge mounds of Assyria made a deeper impression upon me than the temples of Baalbec and the theatres of Ionia. My curiosity had been greatly excited, and I formed the design of thoroughly examining, whenever it might be in my power, the ruins of Nimroud.

It was not till the summer of 1842 that I again passed through Mosul on my way to Constantinople. I found that M. Botta had, since my first visit, commenced excavations on the opposite side of the Tigris in the large mound of Kouyunjik, and in the village of Khorsabad. To him is due the honour of having found the first Assyrian monument. He uncovered an edifice belonging to the age preceding the conquests of Alexander. This was a marvellous and epoch-making discovery.

My first step on reaching Mosul was to present my letters to Mohammed Pasha, governor of the province. His appearance matched his temper and conduct, and thus was not prepossessing. Nature had placed hypocrisy beyond his reach. He had one eye and one ear, was short and fat, deeply marked by small-pox, and uncouth in gestures and harsh in voice. At the time of my arrival the population was in despair at his exactions and cruelties.

The appearance of a stranger led to hopes, and reports were whispered about the town that I was the bearer of the news of the disgrace of the tyrant. But his vengeance speedily fell on the principal inhabitants, for such as had hitherto escaped his rapacity were seized and stripped of their property, on the plea that they had spread reports detrimental to his authority.

Such was the pasha to whom I was introduced two days after my arrival by the British Vice-Consul, M. Rassam. I understood that my plans must be kept secret, though I was ready to put them into operation. I knew that from the authorities and people of the town I could only look for the most decided opposition. On November 8, having secretly procured a few tools, I engaged a mason at the moment of my departure, and carrying with me a variety of guns, spears, and other formidable weapons, declared that I was going to hunt wild boars in a neighbouring village, and floated down the Tigris on a small raft, accompanied by Mr. Ross, a British merchant then residing at Mosul, my cavass, and a servant.

At this time of year nearly seven hours are required to descend the Tigris, from Mosul to Nimroud. It was sunset before we reached the Awai, or dam across the river. We landed and walked to a small hamlet called Naifa. We had entered a heap of ruins, but were welcomed by an Arab family crouching round a heap of half-extinguished embers. The half-naked children and women retreated into a corner of the hut. The man, clad in ample cloak and white turban, being able to speak a little Turkish, and being active and intelligent, seemed likely to be of use to me.

I acquainted him with the object of my journey, offering him regular employment in the event of the experiment proving successful, and assigning him fixed wages as superintendent of the workmen. He volunteered to walk, in the middle of the night, to Selamiyah, a village three miles distant, and to some Arab tents in the neighbourhood, to procure men to assist in the excavations. I slept little during the night. Hopes long cherished were now to be realised, or were to end in disappointment.

Visions of palaces under ground, of gigantic monsters, or sculptured figures, and endless inscriptions floated before me. In the morning I was roused and informed that six workmen had been secured. Twenty minutes' walk brought us to the principal mound. Broken pottery and fragments of brick, inscribed with cuneiform characters, were strewn on all sides. With joy I found the fragment of a bas-relief. Convinced that sculptured remains must still exist in some parts of the mound, I sought for a place where excavations might be commenced with some prospects of success. Awad led me to a piece of alabaster which appeared above the soil. We could not remove it, and on digging downward it proved to be the upper part of a large slab. I ordered the men to work around it, and shortly we uncovered a second slab.

One after another, thirteen slabs came to light, the whole forming a square, with a slab missing at one corner. We had found a chamber, and the gap was at its entrance. I now dug down the face of one of the stones, and a cuneiform inscription was soon exposed to view. Leaving half the workmen to remove the rubbish from the chamber, I led the rest to the south-west corner of the mound, where I had observed many fragments of calcined alabaster.

A trench, opened in the side of the mound, brought me almost immediately to a wall, bearing inscriptions in the same character. Next day, five more workmen having joined, before evening the work of the first party was completed, and I found myself in a room panelled with slabs about eight feet high, and varying from six to four feet in breadth.

Some objects of ivory, on which were traces of gold leaf had been found by Awad in the ruins, and these I told him to keep, much to his surprise. But word had already been sent to the pasha of all details of my doings. When I called on him he pretended at first to be ignorant of the excavations, but presently, as if to convict me of prevarication in my answers to his questions as to the amount of treasure discovered, pulled out of his writing-tray a scrap of paper in which was an almost invisible particle of gold leaf. This, he said, had been brought to him by the commander of the irregular troops at Selamiyah, who had been watching my proceedings.

I suggested that he should name an agent to be present as long as I worked at Nimroud, to take charge of all the precious metals that might be discovered. He promised to write on the subject to the chief of the irregulars, but offered no objection to the continuation of my researches. I returned to Nimroud on the 19th, increased my workmen to thirty, and divided them into three parties. The excavations were actively carried on, and an entrance, or doorway, leading into the interior of the mound, being cleared, rich results soon rewarded our efforts. In a chamber that the Arabs unearthed were found two slabs on which were splendid bas-reliefs, depicting on each a battle scene. In the upper part of the largest were represented two chariots, each drawn by richly caparisoned horses at full speed, and containing a group of three warriors, the principal of which was beardless and evidently a eunuch, grasping a bow at full stretch.

_II.--"They have Found Nimrod Himself!"_

Mohammed Pasha was deposed, and on my return to Mosul, in the beginning of January, I found Ismail Pasha installed in the government. My fresh experiments among the ruins speedily led to the discoveries of extraordinary bas-reliefs. The most perfect of these represented a king, distinguished by his high, conical tiara, raising his extended right hand and resting his left on a bow. At his feet crouched a warrior, probably a captive or rebel. A eunuch held a fly-flapper over the head of the king, who appeared to be talking with an officer standing in front of him, probably his vizir or minister.

The digging of two long trenches led to the discovery of two more walls with sculptures not well preserved. I abandoned this part of the mound and resumed excavations in the north-west ruins near the chamber first opened, where the slabs were uninjured. In two days the workmen reached the top of an entire slab, standing in its original position. In a few hours the earth was completely removed, and there stood to view, to my great satisfaction, two colossal human figures, carved in low relief and in admirable preservation.

The figures were back to back, and from the shoulders of each sprang two wings. They appeared to represent divinities, presiding over seasons. One carried a fallow deer on his right arm, and in his left a branch bearing five flowers. The other held a square vessel or basket in the left hand, and an object resembling a fir cone in his right.

On the morning following these discoveries some of the Arab workmen came towards me in the utmost excitement, exclaiming: "Hasten to the diggers, for they have found Nimrod himself! Wallah! it is wonderful, but we have seen him with our own eyes. There is no God but God." On reaching the trench I found unearthed an enormous human head sculptured out of the alabaster of the country.

They had uncovered the upper part of a figure, the remainder of which was still buried in the earth. I saw at once that the head must belong to a winged bull or lion, similar to those at Khorsabad and Persepolis. It was in admirable preservation. I was not surprised that the Arabs had been amazed and terrified at this apparition. They declared that this was one of the giants whom Noah cursed before the flood, and was not the work of men's hands at all. By the end of March I unearthed several other such colossal figures. They were about twelve feet high and twelve feet long.

I used to contemplate for hours these mysterious emblems, and muse over their intent and history. What more noble forms could have ushered the people into the temples of their gods? They formed the avenue to the portals. For twenty-five centuries they had been hidden from the eye of man, and now they stood forth once more in their ancient majesty.

_III.--Unearthing the Palaces of Assyria_

As the discoveries proceeded in several successive seasons, they threw vivid light on the manners and customs of the Assyrians. My working parties were distributed over the mound, in the ruins of the north-west and south-west palaces; near the gigantic bulls in the centre, and in the south-east corner, where no traces of buildings had as yet been discovered.

I was anxious to pack some of the slabs, which were of the highest interest, to England. They represented the wars of the king and his victories over foreign nations. Above him was the emblem of the supreme deity, represented, as at Persepolis, by a winged man within a circle, and wearing a horned cap resembling that of the human-headed lions. Like the king, he was shooting an arrow, the head of which was in the form of a trident.

Four bas-reliefs, representing a battle, were especially illustrative of Assyrian customs. A eunuch is seen commanding in war, as we have before seen him ministering to the king at religious ceremonies, or waiting on him as his arms-bearer during peace. Judging from the slabs, cavalry must have formed a large and important portion of the Assyrian armies.

The lower series of bas-reliefs contained three subjects: the siege of a castle, the king receiving prisoners, and the king with his army crossing a river. To the castle, the besiegers had brought a battering-ram, which two warriors were seeking to hold in its place by hooks, this part of the bas-relief illustrating the account in the Book of Chronicles and in Josephus of the machine for battering walls, instruments to cast stones, and grappling-irons made by Uzziah.

A cargo of sculptures had already been sent to England for the British Museum, and by the middle of December a second was ready to be dispatched on the river to Baghdad.

When the excavations were recommenced after Christmas eight chambers had been discovered. There were now so many outlets and entrances that I had no trouble in finding new chambers, one leading into another. By the end of April I had uncovered almost the whole building, and had opened twenty-eight halls and rooms cased with alabaster slabs.

The colossal figure of a woman with four wings, carrying a garland, now in the British Museum, was discovered in a chamber on the south side of the palace, as was also the fine bas-relief of the king leaning on a wand, one of the best-preserved and most highly finished specimens of Assyrian sculpture in the national collection.

In the centre of the palace was a great hall, or rather court, for it had probably been without a roof and open to the air, with entrances on the four sides, each formed by colossal human-headed lions and bulls. To the south of this hall was a cluster of small chambers, opening into each other. At the entrance to one of them were two winged human figures wearing garlands, and carrying a wild goat and an ear of corn.

In another chamber were discovered a number of beautiful ivory ornaments, now in the British Museum. On two slabs, forming an entrance to a small chamber in this part of the building, some inscriptions containing the name of Sargon, the king who built the Khorsabad palace. They had been cut above the standard inscription, to which they were evidently posterior.

_IV.--Kouyunjik_

Having finished my work at Nimroud, I turned my attention to Kouyunjik. The term means in Turkish "the little sheep." The great mount is situated on the plain near the junction of the Khausser and the Tigris, the former winding round its base and then making its way into the great stream.

The French consul had carried on desultory excavations some years at Kouyunjik, without finding any traces of buildings. I set my workmen commencing operations by the proper method of digging deep trenches. One morning, as I was at Mosul, two Arab women came to me and announced that sculptures had been discovered.

I rode to the ruins, and found that a wall and the remains of an entrance had been reached. The wall proved to be one side of a chamber. By following it, we reached an entrance, formed by winged human-headed bulls, leading into a second hall. In a month nine halls and chambers had been explored. In its architecture the newly discovered edifice resembled the palaces of Nimroud and Khorsabad. The halls were long and narrow, the walls of unbaked brick and panelled with sculptured slabs.

The king whose name is on the sculptures and bricks from Kouyunjik was the father of Esarhaddon, the builder of the south-west palace at Nimroud, and the son of Sargon, the Khorsabad king, and is now generally admitted to be Sennacherib.

By the middle of the month of June my labours in Assyria drew to a close. The time assigned for the excavations had been expended, and further researches were not contemplated for the present. I prepared, therefore, to turn my steps homeward after an absence of many years. The ruins of Nimroud had been again covered up, and its palaces were once more hidden from the eye.

CAROLUS LINNÆUS

A Tour in Lapland

_I.--A Wandering Scientist_

Carolus Linnæus, the celebrated Swedish naturalist, was born at Rashult on May 23, 1707. At school his taste for botany was encouraged, but after an unsatisfactory academic career his father decided to apprentice him to a tradesman. A doctor called Rothmann, however, recognised and fostered his scientific talents, and in 1728, on Rothmann's advice, he went to Upsala and studied under the celebrated Rudbeck. In 1732 he made his famous tour in Lapland. He gives a fascinating account of this journey in "A Tour in Lapland" ("Lachesis Lapponica"), published in 1737. In 1739 he was appointed a naval physician, and in 1741 became professor of medicine at the University of Upsala, but in the following year exchanged his chair for that of botany. To Linnæus is due the honour of having first enunciated the true principles for defining genera and species, and that honour will last so long as biology itself endures. He found biology a chaos; he left it a cosmos. He died on January 10, 1778. Among his published works are "Systema Naturæ," "Fundamenta Botanica," and the "Species Plantarum."

Having been appointed by the Royal Academy of Sciences to travel through Lapland for the purpose of investigating the three kingdoms of nature in that country, I prepared my wearing apparel and other necessaries for the journey.

I carried a small leather bag, half an ell in length, but somewhat less in breadth, furnished on one side with hooks and eyes, so that it could be opened and shut at pleasure. This bag contained one shirt, two pairs of false sleeves, two half shirts, an inkstand, pencase, microscope, and spying glass, a gauze cap to protect me occasionally from the gnats, a comb, my journal, and a parcel of paper stitched together for drying plants, both in folio; my manuscript ornithology, _Flora Uplandica_, and _Characteres generici_. I wore a hanger at my side, and carried a small fowling-piece, as well as an octangular stick, graduated for the purpose of measuring.

I set out alone from the city of Upsal on Friday, May 22, 1732, at eleven o'clock, being at that time within half a day of twenty-five years of age.

At this season nature wore her most cheerful and delightful aspect, and Flora celebrated her nuptials with Phoebus. The winter corn was half a foot in height, and the barley had just shot out its blade. The birch, the elm, and the aspen-tree began to put forth their leaves.