The birds also suffer much from the heat:  they open their beaks wide, and stretch their wings out far from their bodies.

The inhabitants suffer severely in their eyes; but the Aleppo boils are not so common as in Baghdad, and strangers are not subject to them.

I found the heat very oppressive, but in other respects was very well, especially as regards my appetite:  I believe that I could have eaten every hour of the day.  Probably this was in consequence of the hard diet which I had been obliged to endure on my journey.

The principal thing worth seeing at Mosul is the palace, about half a mile from the town.  It consists of several buildings and gardens, surrounded with walls which it is possible to see over, as they lie lower than the town.  It presents a very good appearance from a distance, but loses on nearer approach.  In the gardens stand beautiful groups of trees, which are the more valuable as they are the only ones in the whole neighbourhood.

During my stay at Mosul, a large number of Turkish troops marched through.  The Pasha rode out a short distance to receive them, and then returned to the town at the head of the foot regiments.  The cavalry remained behind, and encamped in tents along the banks of the Tigris.  I found these troops incomparably better clothed and equipped than those which I had seen, in 1842, at Constantinople.  Their uniform consisted of white trousers, blue cloth spencers, with red facings, good shoes, and fez.

As soon as I was in some degree recovered from the fatigue of my late journey, I requested my amiable host to furnish me with a servant who should conduct me to the ruins of Nineveh; but instead of a servant, the sister of Mrs. Rassam and a Mr. Ross accompanied me.  One morning we visited the nearest ruins on the other side of the Tigris, at the village Nebbi Yunus opposite the town; and, on another day, those called Tel-Nimroud, which are situated at a greater distance, about eighteen miles down the river.

According to Strabo, Nineveh was still larger than Babylon.  He represents it as having been the largest city in the world.  The journey round it occupied three days.  The walls were a hundred feet high, broad enough for three chariots abreast, and defended by fifteen hundred towers.  The same authority states that the Assyrian king Ninus was the founder, about 2,200 years before the birth of Christ.

The whole is now covered with earth, and it is only when the peasants are ploughing, that fragments of brick or marble are here and there turned up.  Long ranges of mounds, more or less high, extending over the immeasurable plain on the left bank of the Tigris, are known to cover the remains of this town.

In the year 1846, the Trustees of the British Museum sent the erudite antiquarian, Mr. Layard, to undertake the excavations.  It was the first attempt that had ever been made, and was very successful. {268}