Part 15

At this time of year nearly seven hours are required to descend the Tigris, from Mosul to Nimroud. It was sunset before we reached the Awai, or dam across the river. We landed and walked to a small hamlet called Naifa. We had entered a heap of ruins, but were welcomed by an Arab family crouching round a heap of half-extinguished embers. The half-naked children and women retreated into a corner of the hut. The man, clad in ample cloak and white turban, being able to speak a little Turkish, and being active and intelligent, seemed likely to be of use to me.

I acquainted him with the object of my journey, offering him regular employment in the event of the experiment proving successful, and assigning him fixed wages as superintendent of the workmen. He volunteered to walk, in the middle of the night, to Selamiyah, a village three miles distant, and to some Arab tents in the neighbourhood, to procure men to assist in the excavations. I slept little during the night. Hopes long cherished were now to be realised, or were to end in disappointment.

Visions of palaces under ground, of gigantic monsters, or sculptured figures, and endless inscriptions floated before me. In the morning I was roused and informed that six workmen had been secured. Twenty minutes' walk brought us to the principal mound. Broken pottery and fragments of brick, inscribed with cuneiform characters, were strewn on all sides. With joy I found the fragment of a bas-relief. Convinced that sculptured remains must still exist in some parts of the mound, I sought for a place where excavations might be commenced with some prospects of success. Awad led me to a piece of alabaster which appeared above the soil. We could not remove it, and on digging downward it proved to be the upper part of a large slab. I ordered the men to work around it, and shortly we uncovered a second slab.

One after another, thirteen slabs came to light, the whole forming a square, with a slab missing at one corner. We had found a chamber, and the gap was at its entrance. I now dug down the face of one of the stones, and a cuneiform inscription was soon exposed to view. Leaving half the workmen to remove the rubbish from the chamber, I led the rest to the south-west corner of the mound, where I had observed many fragments of calcined alabaster.

A trench, opened in the side of the mound, brought me almost immediately to a wall, bearing inscriptions in the same character. Next day, five more workmen having joined, before evening the work of the first party was completed, and I found myself in a room panelled with slabs about eight feet high, and varying from six to four feet in breadth.

Some objects of ivory, on which were traces of gold leaf had been found by Awad in the ruins, and these I told him to keep, much to his surprise. But word had already been sent to the pasha of all details of my doings. When I called on him he pretended at first to be ignorant of the excavations, but presently, as if to convict me of prevarication in my answers to his questions as to the amount of treasure discovered, pulled out of his writing-tray a scrap of paper in which was an almost invisible particle of gold leaf. This, he said, had been brought to him by the commander of the irregular troops at Selamiyah, who had been watching my proceedings.

I suggested that he should name an agent to be present as long as I worked at Nimroud, to take charge of all the precious metals that might be discovered. He promised to write on the subject to the chief of the irregulars, but offered no objection to the continuation of my researches. I returned to Nimroud on the 19th, increased my workmen to thirty, and divided them into three parties. The excavations were actively carried on, and an entrance, or doorway, leading into the interior of the mound, being cleared, rich results soon rewarded our efforts. In a chamber that the Arabs unearthed were found two slabs on which were splendid bas-reliefs, depicting on each a battle scene. In the upper part of the largest were represented two chariots, each drawn by richly caparisoned horses at full speed, and containing a group of three warriors, the principal of which was beardless and evidently a eunuch, grasping a bow at full stretch.

_II.--"They have Found Nimrod Himself!"_

Mohammed Pasha was deposed, and on my return to Mosul, in the beginning of January, I found Ismail Pasha installed in the government. My fresh experiments among the ruins speedily led to the discoveries of extraordinary bas-reliefs. The most perfect of these represented a king, distinguished by his high, conical tiara, raising his extended right hand and resting his left on a bow. At his feet crouched a warrior, probably a captive or rebel. A eunuch held a fly-flapper over the head of the king, who appeared to be talking with an officer standing in front of him, probably his vizir or minister.

The digging of two long trenches led to the discovery of two more walls with sculptures not well preserved. I abandoned this part of the mound and resumed excavations in the north-west ruins near the chamber first opened, where the slabs were uninjured. In two days the workmen reached the top of an entire slab, standing in its original position. In a few hours the earth was completely removed, and there stood to view, to my great satisfaction, two colossal human figures, carved in low relief and in admirable preservation.

The figures were back to back, and from the shoulders of each sprang two wings. They appeared to represent divinities, presiding over seasons. One carried a fallow deer on his right arm, and in his left a branch bearing five flowers. The other held a square vessel or basket in the left hand, and an object resembling a fir cone in his right.

On the morning following these discoveries some of the Arab workmen came towards me in the utmost excitement, exclaiming: "Hasten to the diggers, for they have found Nimrod himself! Wallah! it is wonderful, but we have seen him with our own eyes. There is no God but God." On reaching the trench I found unearthed an enormous human head sculptured out of the alabaster of the country.

They had uncovered the upper part of a figure, the remainder of which was still buried in the earth. I saw at once that the head must belong to a winged bull or lion, similar to those at Khorsabad and Persepolis. It was in admirable preservation. I was not surprised that the Arabs had been amazed and terrified at this apparition. They declared that this was one of the giants whom Noah cursed before the flood, and was not the work of men's hands at all. By the end of March I unearthed several other such colossal figures. They were about twelve feet high and twelve feet long.

I used to contemplate for hours these mysterious emblems, and muse over their intent and history. What more noble forms could have ushered the people into the temples of their gods? They formed the avenue to the portals. For twenty-five centuries they had been hidden from the eye of man, and now they stood forth once more in their ancient majesty.

_III.--Unearthing the Palaces of Assyria_

As the discoveries proceeded in several successive seasons, they threw vivid light on the manners and customs of the Assyrians. My working parties were distributed over the mound, in the ruins of the north-west and south-west palaces; near the gigantic bulls in the centre, and in the south-east corner, where no traces of buildings had as yet been discovered.

I was anxious to pack some of the slabs, which were of the highest interest, to England. They represented the wars of the king and his victories over foreign nations. Above him was the emblem of the supreme deity, represented, as at Persepolis, by a winged man within a circle, and wearing a horned cap resembling that of the human-headed lions. Like the king, he was shooting an arrow, the head of which was in the form of a trident.

Four bas-reliefs, representing a battle, were especially illustrative of Assyrian customs. A eunuch is seen commanding in war, as we have before seen him ministering to the king at religious ceremonies, or waiting on him as his arms-bearer during peace. Judging from the slabs, cavalry must have formed a large and important portion of the Assyrian armies.

The lower series of bas-reliefs contained three subjects: the siege of a castle, the king receiving prisoners, and the king with his army crossing a river. To the castle, the besiegers had brought a battering-ram, which two warriors were seeking to hold in its place by hooks, this part of the bas-relief illustrating the account in the Book of Chronicles and in Josephus of the machine for battering walls, instruments to cast stones, and grappling-irons made by Uzziah.

A cargo of sculptures had already been sent to England for the British Museum, and by the middle of December a second was ready to be dispatched on the river to Baghdad.

When the excavations were recommenced after Christmas eight chambers had been discovered. There were now so many outlets and entrances that I had no trouble in finding new chambers, one leading into another. By the end of April I had uncovered almost the whole building, and had opened twenty-eight halls and rooms cased with alabaster slabs.

The colossal figure of a woman with four wings, carrying a garland, now in the British Museum, was discovered in a chamber on the south side of the palace, as was also the fine bas-relief of the king leaning on a wand, one of the best-preserved and most highly finished specimens of Assyrian sculpture in the national collection.

In the centre of the palace was a great hall, or rather court, for it had probably been without a roof and open to the air, with entrances on the four sides, each formed by colossal human-headed lions and bulls. To the south of this hall was a cluster of small chambers, opening into each other. At the entrance to one of them were two winged human figures wearing garlands, and carrying a wild goat and an ear of corn.

In another chamber were discovered a number of beautiful ivory ornaments, now in the British Museum. On two slabs, forming an entrance to a small chamber in this part of the building, some inscriptions containing the name of Sargon, the king who built the Khorsabad palace. They had been cut above the standard inscription, to which they were evidently posterior.

_IV.--Kouyunjik_

Having finished my work at Nimroud, I turned my attention to Kouyunjik. The term means in Turkish "the little sheep." The great mount is situated on the plain near the junction of the Khausser and the Tigris, the former winding round its base and then making its way into the great stream.

The French consul had carried on desultory excavations some years at Kouyunjik, without finding any traces of buildings. I set my workmen commencing operations by the proper method of digging deep trenches. One morning, as I was at Mosul, two Arab women came to me and announced that sculptures had been discovered.

I rode to the ruins, and found that a wall and the remains of an entrance had been reached. The wall proved to be one side of a chamber. By following it, we reached an entrance, formed by winged human-headed bulls, leading into a second hall. In a month nine halls and chambers had been explored. In its architecture the newly discovered edifice resembled the palaces of Nimroud and Khorsabad. The halls were long and narrow, the walls of unbaked brick and panelled with sculptured slabs.

The king whose name is on the sculptures and bricks from Kouyunjik was the father of Esarhaddon, the builder of the south-west palace at Nimroud, and the son of Sargon, the Khorsabad king, and is now generally admitted to be Sennacherib.

By the middle of the month of June my labours in Assyria drew to a close. The time assigned for the excavations had been expended, and further researches were not contemplated for the present. I prepared, therefore, to turn my steps homeward after an absence of many years. The ruins of Nimroud had been again covered up, and its palaces were once more hidden from the eye.

CAROLUS LINNÆUS

A Tour in Lapland

_I.--A Wandering Scientist_

Carolus Linnæus, the celebrated Swedish naturalist, was born at Rashult on May 23, 1707. At school his taste for botany was encouraged, but after an unsatisfactory academic career his father decided to apprentice him to a tradesman. A doctor called Rothmann, however, recognised and fostered his scientific talents, and in 1728, on Rothmann's advice, he went to Upsala and studied under the celebrated Rudbeck. In 1732 he made his famous tour in Lapland. He gives a fascinating account of this journey in "A Tour in Lapland" ("Lachesis Lapponica"), published in 1737. In 1739 he was appointed a naval physician, and in 1741 became professor of medicine at the University of Upsala, but in the following year exchanged his chair for that of botany. To Linnæus is due the honour of having first enunciated the true principles for defining genera and species, and that honour will last so long as biology itself endures. He found biology a chaos; he left it a cosmos. He died on January 10, 1778. Among his published works are "Systema Naturæ," "Fundamenta Botanica," and the "Species Plantarum."

Having been appointed by the Royal Academy of Sciences to travel through Lapland for the purpose of investigating the three kingdoms of nature in that country, I prepared my wearing apparel and other necessaries for the journey.

I carried a small leather bag, half an ell in length, but somewhat less in breadth, furnished on one side with hooks and eyes, so that it could be opened and shut at pleasure. This bag contained one shirt, two pairs of false sleeves, two half shirts, an inkstand, pencase, microscope, and spying glass, a gauze cap to protect me occasionally from the gnats, a comb, my journal, and a parcel of paper stitched together for drying plants, both in folio; my manuscript ornithology, _Flora Uplandica_, and _Characteres generici_. I wore a hanger at my side, and carried a small fowling-piece, as well as an octangular stick, graduated for the purpose of measuring.

I set out alone from the city of Upsal on Friday, May 22, 1732, at eleven o'clock, being at that time within half a day of twenty-five years of age.

At this season nature wore her most cheerful and delightful aspect, and Flora celebrated her nuptials with Phoebus. The winter corn was half a foot in height, and the barley had just shot out its blade. The birch, the elm, and the aspen-tree began to put forth their leaves.

A number of mares with their colts were grazing everywhere near the road. I remarked the great length of the colts' legs, which, according to common opinion, are as long at their birth as they will ever be. I noticed young kids, under whose chin, at the beginning of the throat, were a pair of tubercles, like those seen in pigs, about an inch long, and clothed with a few scattered hairs. Of their use I am ignorant. The forest abounded with the yellow anemone (_Anemone ranunculoides_), which many people consider as differing from that genus. One would suppose they had never seen an anemone at all. Here, also, grew hepatica, and wood sorrel. Their blossoms were all closed. Who has endowed plants with intelligence to shut themselves up at the approach of rain? Even when the weather changes in a moment from sunshine to rain they immediately close.

Near the great river Linsnan I found blood-red stones. On rubbing them I found the red colour external and distinct from the stone; in fact, it was a red byssus.

At Enänger the people seemed somewhat larger in stature than in other places, especially the men. I inquired whether the children are kept longer at the breast than is usual with us, and was answered in the affirmative. They are allowed that nourishment more than twice as long as in other places. I have a notion that Adam and Eve were giants, and that mankind from one generation to another, owing to poverty and other causes, have diminished in size. Hence, perhaps, the diminutive stature of the Laplanders.

The old tradition that the inhabitants of Helsingland never have the ague is untrue, since I heard of many cases.

Between the post-house of Iggsund and Hudwiksvall a violet-coloured clay is found in abundance, forming a regular stratum. I observed it likewise in a hill, the strata of which consisted of two or three fingers' breadths of common vegetable mould, then from four to six inches of barren sand, next about a span of the violet clay, and lastly, barren sand. The clay contained small and delicately smooth white bivalve shells, quite entire, as well as some larger brown ones, of which great quantities are to be found near the waterside. I am therefore convinced that all these valleys and marshes have formerly been under water, and that the highest hills only then rose above it. At this spot grows the _Anemone hepatica_ with a purple flower; a variety so very rare in other places that I should almost be of the opinion of the gardeners, who believe the colours of particular earths may be communicated to flowers.

On May 21 I found at Natra some fields cultivated in an extraordinary manner. After the field had lain fallow three or four years, it is sown with one part rye and two parts barley, mixed together. The barley ripens, and is reaped. The rye, meantime, goes into leaf, but shoots up no stem, since it is smothered by the barley. After the barley has been reaped, however, the rye grows and ripens the following year, producing an abundant crop.

_II.--Lapland Customs_

The Laplanders of Lycksele prepare a kind of curd or cheese from the milk of the reindeer and the leaves of sorrel. They boil these leaves in a copper vessel, adding one-third part water, stirring it continually with a ladle that it may not burn, and adding fresh leaves from time to time till the whole acquires the consistence of a syrup. This takes six or seven hours, after which it is set by to cool, and is then mixed with the milk, and preserved for use from autumn till the ensuing summer in wooden vessels, or in the first stomach of the reindeer. It is stored either in the caves of the mountains or in holes dug in the ground, lest it should be attacked by the mountain mice.

In Angermanland the people eat sour milk prepared in the following manner. After the milk is turned, and the curd taken out, the whey is put into a vessel, where it remains till it becomes sour. Immediately after the making of cheese, fresh whey is poured lukewarm on the former sour whey. This is repeated several times, care being always taken that the fresh whey be lukewarm. This prepared milk is esteemed a great dainty by the country people. They consider it as very cooling and refreshing. Sometimes it is eaten along with fresh milk. Intermittent fevers would not be so rare here as they are if they could be produced by acid diet, for then this food must infallibly occasion them.

In Westbothland one of the peasants had shot a young beaver, which fell under my examination. It was a foot and a half long, exclusive of the tail, which was a palm in length and two inches and a half in breadth. The hairs on the back were longer than the rest; the external ones brownish black, the inner pale brown; the belly clothed with short, dark-brown fur; body depressed; ears obtuse, clothed with fine short hairs and destitute of any accessory lobe; snout blunt, with round nostrils; upper lip cloven as far as the nostrils; lower very short; the whiskers black, long, and stout; eyebrow of three bristles like the whiskers over each eye; neck, none. The fur of the belly was distinguished from that of the sides by a line on each side, in which the skin was visible. Feet clothed with very short hairs, quite different from those of the body. A fleshy integument invested the whole body. There were two cutting teeth in each jaw, of which the upper pair were the shortest, and notched at the summit like steps; the lower and larger pair were sloped off obliquely--grinders very far remote from the fore-teeth, which is characteristic of the animal, four on each side; hind feet webbed, but fore feet with separate claws; tail flat, oblong, obtuse, with a reticulated naked surface.

At Lycksele was a woman supposed to have a brood of frogs in her stomach, owing to drinking water containing frogs' spawn. She thought she could feel three of them, and that she and those beside her could hear them croak. Her uneasiness was alleviated by drinking brandy. Salt had no effect in killing the frogs, and even _nux vomica_, which had cured another case of the same kind, was useless. I advised her to try tar, but she had already tried it in vain.

The Lycksele Laplanders are subject, when they are compelled to drink the warm sea water, to _allem_, or colic, for which they use soot, snuff, salt, and other remedies. They also suffer from asthma, epilepsy, pleurisy, and rheumatism. Fever and small-pox are rare. They cure coughs by sulphur laid on burning fungus.

On June 3, being lost amid marshes, I sent a man to obtain a guide. About two in the afternoon he returned, accompanied by an extraordinary creature. I can scarce believe that any practical description of a fury could come up to the idea which this Lapland fair one excited. It might well be imagined she was really of Stygian origin. Her stature was very diminutive; her face of the darkest brown, from the effects of smoke; her eyes dark and sparkling; her eyebrows black. Her pitchy-coloured hair hung loose about her head, and she wore a flat, red cap.

Though a fury in appearance, she addressed me with mingled pity and reserve.

I inquired how far it was to Sorsele.

"That we do not know," replied she; "but in the present state of the roads it is at least seven days' journey, as my husband has told me."

I was exhausted and famishing. How I longed to meet once more people who feed on spoon-meat! I inquired of the woman if she could give me food. She replied that she could give me only fish, but finding the fish full of maggots, I could not touch it. On arriving at her hut, however, I perceived three cheeses, and succeeded in buying the smallest. Then I returned through the marshes the way I came.

I remarked that all the women hereabouts feed their infants by means of a horn; nor do they take the trouble of boiling the milk, so it is no wonder the children have worms. I could not help being astonished that these peasants did not suckle their children.