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the Sarsar canal. "There was," he says, a bridge over it, and it is much more considerable than the river of Sarsar, and the district is better cultivated and affords more corn and fruit."

On a journey made from Baghdad to Hillah in June 1836, I met with the bed of this canal, containing from three to four feet water and twelve to fourteen feet in width. The natives designated it to me by the Muhammedan epithet of Mahmudiya; but Lynch has the same canal on his map, with the correct name of Nahr Malik.

There appear to have been many other canals on the plain of Babylonia, at the same remote periods to which we are able to trace back the Nahrmalcha. The names of few of these have remained to us, but it is certain that the ancient Kings of Assyria and of Babylonia, understood the value of canals as well as the Egyptians, Indians, or Chinese; and that the great empire of Babylonia rose upon this plain amid a system of irrigation and water communication, which spread like a net-work over the land. The Babylonian district, says Herodotus, like Egypt, is intersected by a number of canals, which facilitated the intercourse of peace and commerce, and which as Gibbon further expressed it, armed the despair of the Assyrians with the means of opposing a sudden deluge to the progress of an invading army.

Frequent mention is made in Scriptures of Cuth or Cuthah, as being near Babylon. "And the King of Assyria brought men from Babylon and from Cuthah,"-(2 Kings, xvii., 24,) and "the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal.” (v. 30.) The name is apparently the same as that of Cush, the ancestor of Nimrod, and it would appear that the seat of the territory of Cush was primarily in Babylonia, from whence his posterity was translated to Chusistan or Susiana, and into those parts of Arabia and Ethiopia, which successively assumed the name of the land of Cush.-(2 Chron., xxi., 16.)

The city of Babylonia, which thus bore the name of the Patriarch, according to many the same as Ba'al or Bel, was by the Hebrews called Kutha or Cutha. The text of the Talmud mentions that Abraham was imprisoned three years in Kutha, and we find this name even to its locality, preserved by the Arabian historians and geographers. Abu Muhammad in his "Universal History," calls it Kutha, and says it was situated near Babel in the province of Irak. In the time of Abu-lFada, Kuthah was a Muhammadan city, ornamented with mosques. was built on a canal of the same name, and approached by a bridge. Ahmad Ibn Yusuf also mentions the canal on the road to Kuthah, and this canal was, according to the Ayyubite prince and geographer, two farsakhs, or six miles below the Royal River.

It

There exists in the present day a canal, called Nahr Dhiyab, at a distance of six miles to the south of the Nahr Malik, or Royal River, and upon it is the site designated as Shushubar, or Chushubar. Saphioddin, in his Lexicon, notices two places by the name of Kutha as existing in Irak or Babylonia, one called Kutha al Taric, the other Kutha Rubah, the latter evidently the same that is corrupted by the resident Arabs into Chushubar, and where, according to the same authority was the tomb of Abraham.

We have on the plain of Babylonia, beside Babel and Cush, another site of the same remote antiquity, and situate on its own canal or riverthe Biblical Accad-one of the four primeval cities of the world, and the

identity of which with the site of the colossal ruins at Akka Kuf, rests upon tolerably satisfactory evidence. The chief of these evidences may be briefly enumerated, as the positioning of the city on the plains of Babylonia, the true Assyrian character of the ruins at Akka Kuf, the proximate identity of names, and the tradition which ascribes the ruin of Akka Kuf, to Nimrod, it being freqently called Akka-i-Nimrud.

The isolated but enormous pile of Akka Kuf lies at a distance of about six miles to the N.W. of Baghdad. It stands upon a hillock which slopes gently upwards from the level of the plain, above which it rises to an elevation of about 125 feet. It is a solid pile of unburnt bricks, mixed with chopped straw, having layers of reeds two inches thick between every five or six courses. As in the similar structure at Birs, there are also square holes running through the body of the pile. The shape is now so irregular, owing to the effect of time, that its original form can scarcely be detected; but it seems to have been a square, the sides of which faced the cardinal points. The circumference, taken above the mound of rubbish, is 300 feet, and the diameter at the largest part about 100. The mound on which it rests, or out of which it rises, is composed of loose sandy earth, probably drifted by the wind, mingled with fragments of brick pottery, and half vitrified clay.

The effect of a colossal and singular structure like this, rising out of the uniform level plain around, is very striking, and is in this case augmented by the weather-worn form of the edifice, the strange, irregular outline of which causes the profile to vary every moment.

The object of these great mounds, and the high towers which they support, and which are everywhere characteristic of true Assyrian ruins, whether on the plains of Babylonia or of Chaldea, appears to have been various. One of the most constant must undoubtedly have been the erection of suitable edifices to their chief deity, Baal, whom we know by the authority of Scripture to have been worshipped in high places. Such towers may also have served as places of defence, as we find described in Judges (Chap. viii. and ix.), and at the foot of one of which Abimelech (Abu Malik, the father of Kings?) was slain by a woman. Inundations occurring frequently on the plains of Babylonia in ancient times as well as in modern, they may have also been erected as places of refuge, or as monuments to survive these catastrophes.

But when these gigantic structures come under the immediate observation of the traveller, seen against the sunset or rising from the horizon's verge like colossal pillars, deceiving the weary wanderer in their distance, or contorted by a lake of light into a hundred fantastic forms, yet still faithfully guiding him to the point of his destination; the thought forces itself upon the mind that it was also one of their objects to keep the first nations of man together, to guide them in their journey over a mountainous level waste, when compasses were unknown, and to prevent their wandering from the boundaries of their own father-land. The building of the Tower of Babel is directly mentioned in Scripture, as having for object to prevent the first families of man being scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth, and thus the dispensation of the Almighty appears to have originated, not in jealousy at a vain attempt to reach the heavens, but in the wise intention of hurrying the fathers of future nations of men to their several destinations.

Mr. Fraser, a most experienced observer, and a reflective traveller,

carries the spirit of a rather sceptical inquiry so far as to doubt if any of these existing mounds of ruin belong to the earliest cities of the world.

"It is almost certain," he says, "that in the long period of more than four thousand years which have elapsed since Nimrod founded his kingdom in Shinar, every portion of the original fabrics must have mouldered into dust; and that the huge mounds that astonish us in various parts-such as the Birs Nimrud, Akker Koof, Worka, &c., &c., belong all to far later, though still very remote ages, and were temples erected at the instance of the Chaldean priesthood, in the days succeeding Bel or Pul, to the honour of their various deities."

I agree with this so far as regards the erections which, at Accad, Babel, Borsippa, and other places, occupy the crest of ancient mounds of Babylonian bricks, but can scarcely carry my scepticism so far as to what concerns the mounds themselves, which are of such compact solidity that it is difficult even to imagine the time that would be necessary for their entire destruction, while we know from sacred records that such mounds were built at the foundation of the kingdom, and they actually seem to remain there to attest the fact.

Gibbon has remarked that, "in every age the foundation and ruin of Assyrian cities has been easy and rapid: the country is destitute of stone and timber, and the most solid structures are composed of bricks baked in the sun, and joined by a cement of native bitumen."

This is very true as far as regards the overthrow of the walls of Babylon and the conversion of "the golden city" into a hunting park, on the rise of Seleucia; but it does not show that mounds of solid bricks, of a thousand yards long and a hundred feet high, although they must have suffered to a considerable extent, have been, or could be, swept away from the surface of the earth, more than the pyramids of Egypt, by almost any elapse of time, without the aid of some physical cataclysm. It would rather be thought that such mounds remain to the present day in the heart of a now solitary waste, like the awful figure of prophecy herself, to point out the complete fulfilment of her solemn denunciation.

I have approached the ruined tower of Akka Kuf, which was supposed, before Babylonian antiquities were much studied, to have been the site of a Persian monarch's summer-house, on the top of which the passing breeze might be enjoyed, when all was calm and sultry below; from various directions, from that of the Median wall, and from that of Baghdad, and excepting when the surface of the land is occupied by lake or marsh, the whole plain around is far and wide covered with mounds of ruin, traces of vast embankments, vestiges of canals of irrigation, and debris of furnace and sun-baked bricks and pottery.

In the present day the Nahr Isa, or Saklawiya canal, having its origin near Sifairah, flows past Akka Kuf into an extensive marsh. The amount of its waters are, however, much reduced by several derivative canals of irrigation, carried off during its course, while the main body of the waters are conveyed to the Tigris, south of Baghdad, by a canal excavated by Dawad Pasha, not many years back, and which is called after his name. So wide and deep is this canal, that Captain Lynch succeeded in conveying a steamboat across from the Tigris to the Euphrates by its means. In the time of Abu-l-Fada, the same canal lost itself in the heart of western Baghdad. This was also the first canal met with by

Julian, described by his historians as being at Macepracta, and the same as the Narraga of Pliny on which was the town of Hippara or Hipparenum, now Sifairah. Bochart (Phaleg., p. 38), is in error when he says that the first canal in Babylonia flowed to Seleucia. That was the Royal River. The first was the one now under discussion, and the canal of Accad. Abydenus calls it Akrakanon, and Ctesias notices the river Argade as being in Sittacene, while Elian in his treatise on animals (lib. 16, c. 42), further notices the river Argades as inhabited by snakes with black bodies and white heads, which were six feet long, and the bite of which was fatal. The town of Sitace we know from Xenophon, was about a mile and a half from the Tigris, and it appears to have been succeeded by the Muhammadan Akbara, in the same neighbourhood. Having been placed in the dilemma of sleeping on a mound in the midst of this marsh, I know it to be replete with boars and game, as well as other wild animals; indeed it would be difficult to visit it by day without disturbing some of the former. The same spot was also celebrated in antiquity for its flitting marsh fires, or Igni Fatui. Aristotle, in his treatise on wonderful things, relates that there are spots here which always burn, and Pliny (12, c. 17) repeats the same thing.

Chalne, another of the primeval cities of the world, has been sought for by some at Callinicus, by others at Ctesiphon. Its real site appears, however, to be at the foot of Zagros, for Isidore, of Charax, describes Chala the chief city of Chalonitis, and probably the same as the Calneh and Calno of Scriptures, to have been situated considerably to the eastward of Seleucia. Pliny merely says, that Ctesiphon was in Chalonitis, a district which extended from Tigris to Zagros, between Apollonitis to the north, and Mesene to the south. The other of the four primeval cities Erech, appears to have been more to the southward, and will be noticed when we arrive upon the plain of Chaldea.

It appears from the book of Baruch (cap. i., v. 4), as quoted by Bochart, that at the same early and biblical times, that portion of the Euphrates which flowed onwards to Babylon, was called the river Sud, or, as the able biblical geographer just quoted corrects it from Hebrew monuments-the river Sur. This fact is of much importance to the geography of the rivers of Babylonia, for the name of Naarsares, or Maarsares, was given by Ptolemy and others to that portion of the river which lay below the Royal Canal at a time when that derivative carried away a major part of its waters. The remainder flowing sluggishly onwards by Babel and Sura, gave off a canal to the west, while the rest was lost in the marshes of Babylonia. The name was supposed, from these circumstances, to be derived from its stagnant character, rendering the waters impure and fetid. "The fetid river," says Hyde in his admirable work on the "Religion of the Ancient Persians," "which leads to the marshes through Babylon." But the name appears rather to be a corruption of Nahr Sura, from the town so called on its banks, and which we have previously noticed as the site of a celebrated Jewish synagogue and school. Idrisi describes the second branch of Euphrates as flowing past Sura, and Abu-l-Fada speaks of the prolongation of the river, Euphrates, as taking beyond the Kasr Ibn Hubaira, the name of Nahr Sura, corrupted in Reiske to Sarah or Sares.

.COUNT D'ORSAY'S PORTRAIT OF LORD BYRON.

WHATEVER Count d'Orsay undertakes, seems invariably to be well done. As the arbiter elegantiarum he has reigned supreme in matters of taste and fashion, confirming the attempts of others by his approbation or gratifying them by his example. To dress, or drive, or shine in the gay world like Count d'Orsay, was once the ambition of the " "youth of England," who then discovered in this model no higher attributes. But if Time, who "steals our years away," steal also our pleasures, he replaces them with others, or substitutes a better thing, and thus it has befallen with Count d'Orsay. If the gay equipage or the well-apparelled man be less frequently seen than formerly-that which causes more lasting satisfaction, and leaves an impression of a far more exalted nature, comes day by day into higher relief, awakening only the regret that it should have been concealed so long. When we see what Count d'Orsay's productions are, we are tempted to ask with Malvolio's feigned correspondent, "Why were these things hid ?"

But we are glad to see that they are to be hidden no more, and that the accomplished count seems disposed to show the world of how much he is really capable. His croquis de société had long charmed his friends, and his great skill in modelling was bruited abroad, when the world began to ask, is it true that in the man of fashion exists the genius of the sculptor and the painter? Evidence was soon given that such surmises were true. Count d'Orsay's statuettes of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, and his portraits of Dwarkanauth Tagore and Lord Lyndhurst exhibited capabilities of the first order, and satisfied every inquiry. Additional proof of his powers has been afforded by the publication of the engraving of his portrait of Lord Byron.

It is certainly a highly interesting work of art, and in point of resemblance we are assured that one who knew him, perhaps best of all, has declared that until now there never existed a likeness which completely satisfied the mind. Certain traits of that thoughtful and intelligent countenance were wanting in other portraits, but in this they are all happily united.

Count d'Orsay has represented the noble bard where most he loved to be, on the deck of his own vessel. He is sitting in sailor's costume, leaning on the rudder, with his right hand under his chin, and his head elevated. In his fine large eyes is an expression of deep thought and a pensive character marks his firm but femininely-cut mouth. His noble expanse of forehead and fine contour of head, are drawn with a free and vigorous pencil. If we did not know whose likeness was intended, we should still call this portrait an exceedingly fine study; but our interest in it is increased by the fidelity of the resemblance. The portrait is well engraved by Lewis.

We understand that his Grace the Duke of Wellington is so well pleased with the statuettes to which we have alluded, copies of which he has given an order to be executed in silver, that he is now sitting to the Count for his portrait also. We therefore look forward with a very pleasant anticipation to another likeness of the hero of a hundred fightsand pictures too.