wide and deep moat. On the summit were low towers, rising above the
wall to the height of some ten or fifteen feet, and probably serving as
guardrooms for the defenders. These towers are said to have been 250 in
number; they were least numerous on the western face of the city, where
the wall ran along the marshes. They were probably angular, not round;
and instead of extending through the whole thickness of the wall, they
were placed along its outer and inner edge, tower facing tower, with
a wide space between them--"enough," Herodotus says, "for a four-horse
chariot to turn in." The wall did not depend on them for its strength,
but on its own height and thickness, which were such as to render
scaling and mining equally hopeless.

Such was Babylon, according to the descriptions of the ancients--a
great city, built on a very regular plan, surrounded by populous suburbs
interspersed among fields and gardens, the whole being included within a
large square strongly fortified enceinte. When we turn from this picture
of the past to contemplate the present condition of the localities, we
are at first struck with astonishment at the small traces which remain
of so vast and wonderful a metropolis. "The broad walls of Babylon"
are "utterly broken" down, and her "high gates burned with fire."
"The golden city hath ceased." God has "swept it with the bosom of
destruction." "The glory of the kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees'
excellency," is become "as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrha." The
traveller who passes through the land is at first inclined to say that
there are no ruins, no remains, of the mighty city which once lorded it
over the earth. By and by, however, he begins to see that though ruins,
in the common acceptation of the term, scarcely exist--though there are
no arches, no pillars, but one or two appearances of masonry even yet
the whole country is covered with traces of exactly that kind which it
was prophesied Babylon should leave. Vast "heaps" or mounds, shapeless
and unsightly, are scattered at intervals over the entire region where
it is certain that Babylon anciently stood, and between the "heaps" the
soil is in many places composed of fragments of pottery and bricks, and
deeply impregnated with nitre, infallible indications of its having once
been covered with buildings. As the traveller descends southward from
Baghdad he finds these indications increase, until, on nearing the
Euphrates, a few miles beyond