ons present
themselves in every volume of travels in Assyria and Chaldea. "Those
splendid accounts of the Babylonian lands yielding crops of grain of two
and three hundred fold, compared with the modern face of the country,
afford a remarkable proof of the _singular desolation_ to which it has
been subjected. The canals at present can only be traced by their
decayed banks. The soil of this desert consists of a hard clay, mixed
with mud, which at noon becomes so heated with the sun's rays, that I
found it too hot to walk over it with any degree of comfort."[92] "That
it was at some former period in a far different state is evident from
the number of canals by which it is traversed, now dry and neglected;
and the quantity of heaps of earth, covered with fragments of brick and
broken tiles, which are seen in every direction--the indisputable traces
of former cultivation."[93] "The abundance of the country has vanished
as clean away as if the besom of desolation had swept it from north to
south; the whole land, from the outskirts of Babylon to the farthest
stretch of sight, lying a melancholy waste. _Not a habitable spot
appears for countless miles._"[94]

As the desolation of the country was to be extraordinary, so the
desolation of the city of Babylon was to be remarkable. When the prophet
wrote, its walls had been raised to the height of three hundred and
fifty feet, and made broad enough for six chariots to drive upon them
abreast. From its hundred brazen gates issued the armies which trampled
under foot the liberties of mankind, and presented their lives to the
nod of a despot, who slew whom he would, and whom he would allowed to
live. Twenty years' provisions were collected within its walls, and the
world would not believe that an enemy could enter its gates.
Nevertheless, the prophets of God pronounced against it a doom of
destruction as extraordinary as the pride and wickedness which procured
it. Tyre, the London of Asia, was to _become a place for the spreading
of nets_,[95] and the Infidel Volney tells us its commerce had declined
to _a trifling fishery_; but even that implies some few resident
inhabitants. Rabbah, of Ammon, was to become _a stable for camels and a
couching place for flocks_.[96] Lord Lindsay reports that "he could not
sleep amidst its ruins for the bleating of sheep, that the dung of
camels covers the ruins of its palaces, and that the only building left
entire in its Acropolis is used as a sheep