Istar of Babylon: A Phantasy

by Margaret Horton Potter

"Hodo! Hodo!" he shouted. "It is the city! Look! The Great City!"

From Hodo, in front, there came, after a minute's look, a ringing laugh. "Yes, it is the ghost of the false city. We see it often here in the desert, as we see lakes and trees that are not. Truly it is a strange thing."

Charmides heard him incredulously. Before his eyes was certainly a vision of mighty walls, and square towers, and gates, and many-roofed palaces outlined against the heat-blurred sky. They kept their places, too, seeming to grow more and more distinct as the caravan proceeded. The rhapsode closed his eyes and opened them again. It was still there. Yes, he could now see the groups of palm-trees and faint outlines of olive foliage around the walls; and presently, when a broad, blue river was to be seen winding its way from east to west through the plain, Charmides turned on his camel and called to Tirutû behind:

"Is not yonder city indeed Babylon, Tirutû?"

But the trader smiled and slowly shook his head, and Charmides, half angry and wholly unconvinced, turned again to the sight that entranced him. Clear and straight, for ten minutes more, it stood out against the sky. Then, of a sudden, the city vanished in one quiver, and, where it had been, only the dark horizon-line, straight and unbroken, stretched away as usual. Charmides was sad that the dream had vanished; but he could laugh at himself when Hodo turned to look at him with good-natured amusement. Still, the picture remained with him, and came to seem, in after years, his first impression of the far-famed city that was to be his home.

The march that night was more rapid than usual, and the halt next day not made till the heat was past bearing. At the noon meal mirth ran high, and wine and water were drunk with an abandon possible only to men who had for three weeks practised a cruel restraint. Twenty-four hours more would bring them to Babylon, and already they were on the borders of civilization and fertility.

On this day Charmides sat apart from his companions, feeling no desire to join in their loud joy. When finally the company lay down to rest, the Greek felt that sleep was impossible for him, and he went off alone to the little tent where formerly a guard had been stationed, but which was empty now. Here he sat down upon the sand and let his thoughts hold unbridled sway. For he was standing on the threshold of his new world, and he could not but pause for a moment to think of all that he had left behind him. It was a melancholy time, but not a long, before Hodo's voice was to be heard giving the signal for the last mount. Quickly the tents were struck and bound upon the camels; and then the little procession moved away towards the line of green that bounded the yellow sands.

By morning they found on all sides fertile fields of grain, already ripening. And Charmides' sand-weary eyes rested with untold delight on the rows of wheat, millet, and sesame, barred here and there with little streams of water conducted from the broad canals that ran everywhere through the land, and filled all the year round by the great mother-stream, Euphrates. Now and then the caravan passed a mud-village set in the midst of a broad field of grass where goats, sheep, and bullocks herded and donkeys and camels were tethered side by side. The people of these villages were of the lowest Chaldaic type, nearly black, thick-lipped, large-nosed, and short of stature. Charmides regarded them with dismay. He had seen one or two negro slaves brought from northern Africa to Mazzara, and they had seemed to him less than human. Were the men of this new race all like that? Presently, however, they came upon a reassuring sight. The caravan passed one of the large stone wells that stood in the middle of a grain-field. From it a buffalo, at work in his rude tread-mill, was drawing water, and beside the animal, clothed in a long, white garment, bearing a tall jar on her head, one hand upraised, the other on her hip, stood a slight girl with a skin almost as white as Charmides' own. Her eyes and hair were shining black; but as Charmides looked at her she flashed a smile at him, showing a set of pearly teeth, and, a moment later, laughing aloud, a pure, ringing laugh, that in some way set Charmides into a cheery frame of mind for the rest of the day.

He came afterwards to know that it was not a native of Babylonia whom he saw at the well, but one of a captive race resident in this Eastern land since the year when the city of Solomon fell before the armies of the great son of Nabopolassar. But there were Babylonians also as white as the Jews, their Semitic blood having at some time been mingled with that of Aryan races, Persians, Elamites, or, perhaps, Assyrians, whom a thousand years of a colder clime had materially bleached.

This last day became fiercely hot, but no noon halt was made. Each man munched a piece of bread and a handful of dates, and drank a cup of goat's milk purchased on the way, and the camels were given twenty minutes' rest and an armful of fodder in the shade of a palm grove near a canal. Then the march was eagerly resumed, for, even now, many miles away, the gigantic walls of Nimitti-Bel, the outer wall of the city, were to be seen towering up on the horizon. At four o'clock they passed through Borsip, the suburb of Babylon, towards which Hodo cast loving eyes, for it was his home. But it was night before they entered the open gateway of Nimitti-Bel, that incredibly gigantic structure, the fame of which had spread over all the East; and it took nearly an hour to traverse the sparsely inhabited space between that and the smaller, inside wall, Imgur-Bel. And before they had reached this, Hodo, turning, called to the Greek: