ng to their ability, and about their armes
and smalles of their legs they haue hoops of golde, siiuer or yron. All of
them as wel women and children as men, are very great swimmers, and often
times swimming they brought vs milke to our barke in vessels vpon their
heads. These people are very theeuish, which I prooued to my cost: for they
stole a casket of mine, with things of good value in the same, from vnder
my mans head as he was asleepe: and therefore trauellers keepe good watch
as they passe downe the riuer. [Sidenote: Euphrates described.] Euphrates
at Birrah is about the breadth of the Thames at Lambeth, and in some places
narrower, in some broader: it runneth very swiftly, almost as fast as the
riuer of Trent: it hath diuers sorts of fish in it, but all are scaled,
some as bigge as salmons, like barbils. We landed at Felugia the eight and
twentieth of Iune, where we made our abode seuen dayes, for lacke of camels
to cary our goods to Babylon: the heat at that time of the yere is such in
those parts, that men are loth to let out their camels to trauell. This
Felugia is a village of some hundred houses, and a place appointed for
discharging of such goods as come downe the riuer: the inhabitants are
Arabians. Not finding camels here, we were constrained to vnlade our goods,
and hired an hundred asses to cary our marchandises onely to New Babylon
ouera short desert, in crossing whereof we spent eighteene houres
trauelling by night, and part of the morning, to auoid the great heat.

[Sidenote: The ruines of olde Babylon.] In this place which we crossed
ouer, stood the olde mighty city of Babylon, many olde ruines whereof are
easily to be seene by day-light, which I Iohn Eldred haue often beheld at
my good leasure, hauing made three voyages betweene the new city of Babylon
and Aleppo ouer this desert. Here also are yet standing the ruines of the
olde tower of Babel, which being vpon a plaine ground seemeth a farre off
very great, but the nerer you come to it, the lesser and lesser it
appeareth; sundry times I haue gone thither to see it, and found the
remnants yet standing aboue a quarter of a mile in compasse, and almost as
high as the stone worke of Pauls steeple in London, but it sheweth much
bigger. The bricks remaining in this most ancient monument be halfe a yard
thicke, and three quarters of a yard long, being dried in the Sunne onely,
and betweene euery course of bricks there lieth a course of mattes made of
can