Hillah.
Here again we were held up while countless mahailas passed through, but we succeeded in getting over at last and eventually found the house of the Wise Men, the headquarters of the irrigation officers.
Had we been ambassadors on a diplomatic visit to Hillah, we could not have been more hospitably entertained or given greater facilities for getting about in a most fascinating region of the world for any one who felt the glamour of history in this once highly civilized country.
Great buildings like Ctesiphon near Baghdad or traces of the vast irrigation works of the past are full of interest, but for romance and mystery there is no piece of the world more fraught with meaning than this site of the city of Nebuchadnezzar, nearly 200 square miles in extent, and now, but for the comparatively small tract of irrigated land, a desert.
"Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils."
