ch a new method of rapid casting had been
invented.

[Illustration: 065.jpg KING SENNACHERIB WATCHING THE TRANSPORT OF A
COLOSSAL STATUE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

Formerly the erection of such edifices cost much in suffering to
the artificers employed on them, but Sennacherib brought his great
enterprise to a prompt completion without extravagant outlay or
unnecessary hardship inflicted on his workmen. He proceeded to annex
the neighbouring quarters of the city, relegating the inhabitants to the
suburbs while he laid out a great park on the land thus cleared; this
park was well planted with trees, like the heights of Amanus, and in
it flourished side by side all the forest growths indigenousnto the
Cilician mountains and the plains of Chaldaea. A lake, fed by a canal
leading from the Khuzur, supplied it with water, which was conducted in
streams and rills through the thickets, keeping them always fresh and
green. Vines trained on trellises afforded a grateful shade during the
sultry hours of the day; birds sang in the branches, herds of wild boar
and deer roamed through the coverts, in order that the prince might
enjoy the pleasures of the chase without quitting his own private
grounds.

[Illustration: 066.jpg ASSYRIAN BAS-RELIEFS AT BAVIAN]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch in Layard.

The main part of these constructions was finished about 700 B.C., but
many details were left incomplete, and the work was still proceeding
after the court had long been in residence on the spot. Meanwhile a
smaller palace, as well as barracks and a depot for arms and provisions,
sprang up elsewhere. Eighteen aqueducts, carried across the country,
brought the water from the Muzri to the Khuzur, and secured an adequate
supply to the city; the Ninevites, who had hitherto relied upon
rain-water for the replenishing of their cisterns, awoke one day to
find themselves released from all anxiety on this score. An ancient and
semi-subterranean canal, which Assur-nazir-pal had constructed nearly
two centuries before, but which, owing to the neglect of his successors,
had become choked up, was cleaned out, enlarged and repaired, and made
capable of bringing water to their doors from the springs of Mount Tas,
in the same year as that in which the battle of Khalule took place.* At
a later date, magnificent bas-reliefs, carved on the rock by order of
Esar-haddon, representing winged bulls, figures of the gods and of