western, is 7,000 feet in length; the southern is about 3,000; and the eastern, which is slightly curved outward, is 16,000 or some over three miles in length. "The circuit of the walls is less than eight miles instead of more than fifty. It contains 1,800 acres instead of being 112,000!" (Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies, i. 260). Rawlinson further states that a city of this size with one hundred people to the acre would accommodate a population of 175,000, but that no city in the east is now so populous.

Layard (Nineveh and Babylon, p. 658 fol.) has given the most accurate description of the fortifications outside of the walls of Nineveh, the remains of which may still be seen. He says:

"The western wall was washed by the river, and needed no other defense. A deep ditch, of which traces still exist, appears to have been dug beneath the northThat to the south was also protected by a dyke and the Tigris. The side most

ern.

accessible to the enemy was that to the east, and it was accordingly fortified with extraordinary care and strength." He describes the fortifications on this side at great length. The northern half was fortified by the river Khauser, which served as a ditch, and the steep rocky ridge along its eastern bank as a wall, and still the remains of a rampart are traceable between the river and the city. The southern part of the eastern wall was fortified by “a deep ditch about 150 feet wide, a parallel wall, a second ditch about 108 feet wide, but of considerable depth, a third wall, the remains of which are 108 feet high, and a few mounds rising in the level country beyond."

If Nineveh was but a part of a larger city of that name, why are these extensive fortifications directly in the heart of the supposed city? Why should the king erect greater defenses against the people of his own city than upon the other sides? Apart from the inaccurate accounts of the