ived good advice from Sir John MacNeill, the
British representative at the court of the Shah: "You must either travel
as important personages, with a retinue of servants and an adequate
escort, or alone, as poor men, with nothing to excite the cupidity of
the people amongst whom you will have to mix. If you cannot afford to
adopt the first course, you must take the latter." The latter they were
forced to take.

Many a young man has the gift to acquire languages--almost any Oriental
can talk three or four--and the ability to rough it and live on the fare
of the people, though barbarous; and many a man has the spirit of
adventure; but this young man had one peculiar and unusual qualification
that directed him to his future career. As a child, he had read the
"Arabian Nights" with intense delight, with their stories centred about
Baghdad. Then every book of Eastern adventure, every bit of travel in
Syria, Arabia, or Persia that he could find he had eagerly devoured. It
was his day and night's longing that he might visit strange lands of
history and make explorations and discoveries. So wherever he was, he
visited every ruin and tried to copy every inscription. If his companion
would not turn aside to visit some region of renown and danger, he would
go alone and join him later. As they came down the river Tigris in their
boat, they passed the immense mound of Nimroud, and so impressed was
Layard by it that he then, scarce twenty-three years old, resolved that
some day he would search and learn what was hidden under it; but little
did he imagine what wonderful monuments he was to find there only a few
years later.

Without a servant, as poor men, in a caravan of fanatical and hostile
Persian pilgrims returning from the shrines, just travellers trying to
go by land through Persia and Afghanistan to India and Ceylon, they
left Baghdad. It was a time of unusual danger, for the British Minister
had been recalled from the Persian Court, and war with England was
threatened. They were taken for spies, and sent to the presence of the
Shah, and forbidden to follow the route they had chosen and which had
been marked out for them by the Council of the Royal Geographical
Society, to report on rivers and mountains and ruins not yet explored.
They were insulted and robbed, and their lives were often in danger; but
at last they received from the Shah their firmans. Now they separated.
His companion felt that he must go by the quickest rou