a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness_,"[100] says
another. How can such contradictions be true? says the scoffer.

But the scoffer's contradiction is a fact. God can cause the most
discordant agencies to agree in effecting his purpose. Babylon is
alternately an overflowed swamp, from the inundations of the obstructed
Euphrates, and an arid desert, under the scorching rays of an Eastern
sun. Says Mignon: "Morasses and ponds tracked the ground in various
places. For a long time after the subsiding of the Euphrates great part
of this place is little better than a swamp." At another season it was
"a dry waste and burning plain." Even at the same period, "one part on
the western side is low and marshy, and another an arid desert."[101]

Another, and widely different agent, to be employed in the destruction
of the great center of tyranny and idolatry, is thus specifically and
definitely indicated in the prediction: "_Behold, I am against thee, O
destroying mountain, saith the Lord, which destroyest all the earth: and
I will stretch out my hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks,
and will make thee a burnt mountain. And they shall not take of thee a
stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations; but thou shalt be
desolate forever, saith the Lord._"[102]

"There is one fact," says Fraser, "in connection with the most
remarkable of these relics (the Birs Nimrod), which we can not dismiss
without a few more observations. All travelers who have ascended the
Birs have taken notice of the singular heaps of brick-work scattered on
the summit of this mound, at the foot of the remnant of the wall still
standing. To the writer they appeared the most striking of all the
ruins. That they have undergone the most violent action of fire is
evident from the complete vitrification which has taken place in many of
the masses. Yet how a heat sufficient to produce such an effect could
have been applied at such a height from the ground is unaccountable.
They now lie on a spot elevated two hundred feet above the plain, and
must have fallen from some much more lofty position, for the structure
which still remains, and of which they may be supposed originally to
have formed a part, bears no marks of fire. The building originally can
not have contained any great proportion of combustible materials, and to
produce so intense a heat by substances carried to such an elevation
would have been almost impossible, for want of space to pil