PLACE, _Ninive et l'Assyrie_, vol. i. pp. 211-224.

[133] _Genesis_ xi. 3.

[134] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, pp. 506 and 531.

[135] See, for Chaldaea, LOFTUS, _Travels and Researches_, p. 133; and for
Assyria, PLACE, _Ninive et l'Assyrie_, vol. i. p. 250, and vol. ii. plates
38 and 39. As an example of the varieties of section presented by these
bricks, we may cite those found by M. de Sarzec in the ruins of Tello,
which belonged to a circular pillar. This pillar was composed of circular
bricks, placed in horizontal courses round a centre of the same material.
Elsewhere triangular bricks, which must have formed the angles of buildings
have been found. TAYLOR, _Notes on the Ruins of Mugheir_ (_Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society_, vol. xv. p. 266). At Abou-Sharein, this same
traveller found convex-sided bricks (_Journal_, &c., vol. xv. p. 409).

[136] PLACE, _Ninive_, &c., vol. i. p. 233.

[137] Some of these fragments are in the Louvre. They are placed on the
ground in the Assyrian Gallery. Their forms are too irregular to be fitted
for reproduction here. But for the hollow in question, one might suppose
them to be mere shapeless boulders. LAYARD noticed similar remains among
the ruins of Babylon, _Discoveries_, &c., p. 528.

[138] M. OPPERT is even inclined to think that some of them came from the
peninsula of Sinai and the eastern shores of Egypt (_Revue Archeologique_,
vol. xlii. p. 272). The formation of the Arabian hills is not yet very well
known, and we are not in a position to say for certain whence these rocks
may have come. It seems probable however, that they might have been
obtained from certain districts of Arabia, from which they could be carried
without too great an effort to within reach of the canals fed by the
Euphrates, or of some port trading with the Persian Gulf.

[139] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, &c., p. 528.

[140] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 116.

[141] HERODOTUS, i. 186. DIODORUS (ii. viii. 2), quoting Ctesias, speaks in
almost the same terms of this stone bridge, which he attributes to
Semiramis.

[142] BOTTA, _Monuments de Ninive_, vol. v. p. 3.

[143] In the valley of the Khabour, the chief affluent of the Euphrates,
LAYARD found volcanoes whose activity seemed only to have been extinguished
at a very recent epoch. Long streams of lava projected from their sides
into the plain. _Discoveries_, p. 307.

[144] As for the simple and rapid nature of the process by which crude
bricks are manuf