and Earth,' and was a
sort of pyramid built in seven stages, the stairs being ornamented with
the planetary colours, and on the seventh was an ark or tabernacle. The
Birs was destroyed by Xerxes and restored by Antiochus Soter. The Tower
of Babel was possibly the Esagila of the inscriptions, or the
E-Temenanki--a tower not yet identified. Not far from Birs Nimrud are
the ruins of Hashemieh, the first residence of the Abbaside Khalifs."

Brown would have none of this. Anything is anathema to Brown which
destroys topographical romance. He is a fierce enemy to "higher
criticism," which does away with the whale in the book of Jonah or the
snow-clad summit of Mount Ararat as the resting-place of the ark. It is
quite exciting, he maintains, to picture the ark stuck on the perilous
ice-peaks of a glacier, with Noah and his family endeavouring to get the
elephants and giraffes safely down a ravine like the Mer de Glace to the
more temperate regions of the plains below. How much better than
thinking of it stuck fast on some wretched mound by the Euphrates, 30
feet high.

[Illustration: AN OLD WORLD CRAFT, A TYPE OF BOAT UNCHANGED SINCE THE
DAYS OF SINBAD]

[Illustration: Tower of Babel (Fig. 3).]

Here was a find, too good to be lost, a high tower on a mound visible
from afar and unrivalled by any equally picturesque claimant. It looked
the part splendidly, so the Tower of Babel it should be as far as Brown
was concerned.

As a matter of fact, Brown "let himself go" with historical speculations
and discovered not only that this was the Tower of Babel, but that it
was the site of Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace, with evident signs, from
a fragment of calcined brick, which he bore away in triumph, that it had
been heated seven times hotter on some occasion.

We climbed about the ruin, unearthed several coins, which seemed quite
plentiful in one place where the rain had washed down the side of a
small mound, and found obvious signs of some great conflagration. Brown
says that, as no one has got any better explanation of this fire than
he has, he will stick to his furnace theory.

The native driver turned up all right with the car and took us back to
Hillah. From there we crossed the river by the bridge of boats and at a
distance of about five miles came upon the scene of the great
excavations, which, although the city is said to have extended over an
area of some 200 square miles, is generally known as the site of
Babylon.