The harrow is only a large rake, and is useful, not only in breaking the clods of earth, but in covering over the newly sown seeds. What useful inventions were these machines, and all the improvements that have been made in them!
My uncle explained to me, that vegetation is the common source from whence all animals derive their food; either at once, from the growing plant, or at second hand from their prey, who had been nourished by it; and that vegetables, in their turn, live on all that has already lived and vegetated. There is a continual succession of production and decay; for it is by decay, and the decomposition that follows, that nature restores to the ground those substances of which it is robbed by vegetation.
But when the produce of the soil is removed for the use of man, and not left to immediate decay, the agriculturist is obliged to assist nature, by supplying other decayed vegetable matter, or else, by mixing it with some artificial manure. To do this more effectually, people are obliged to study the principles of the different soils, in order to know what species of manure should be applied to fertilize, or to correct them; to render one, for instance, more alkaline, or to lessen the siliceous nature of another. Even rest restores to the earth some of its productive powers; and when it is ploughed up, and long exposed in what is called a fallow, the air has considerable influence in improving it.
This led to a conversation on the many varieties of soils; and my uncle says I shall become acquainted with them in time. They are all well known to good farmers, who can thereby determine what crops are adapted to each. Who could have thought, Mamma, that all this skill and knowledge was necessary to a common farmer! I imagined that any one could sow what seed he chose, and then reap and gather the produce; but as to feeding the earth in return for the nourishment drawn from it, I cannot say that ever entered my head. So, you see, that I have learned something to-day—something real, Mamma.
8th.—My uncle has been very much interested in the account which Ker Porter gives of Babylon, in his second volume, and has been so kind as to read to us the description of what this great city was, when at the summit of its glory; and what it is now, and has been for so many ages.
According to Herodotus, the walls of this prodigious city were sixty miles in length, and formed a square of fifteen miles each way, in which gardens, lawns, and groves were included. They were built of large bricks, cemented together with bitumen, and, he says, were 350 feet high, and 87 feet thick, and protected on the outside by a vast ditch, lined with the same materials. There were 25 gates of solid brass on each side, and from every gate a street of 150 feet wide crossed the city to the opposite gate. According to his description, the temples, palaces, and hanging gardens were equally wonderful. A branch of the Euphrates flowed through the city, from north to south. To prevent this great river from overflowing, it was confined by walls or quays of brick; and while these were building, the course of the river was turned into a basin, forty miles square, and thirty-five feet deep, which had been cut for the purpose of receiving it.
The wealth, and power, and grandeur of this magnificent city, is strongly expressed in the Scriptures, where it is spoken of as “The lady of kingdoms given to pleasure, that dwellest carelessly, and sayest in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me.”
Among its vast buildings, was the Tower of Babel, erected ages before, by Nimrod, on the plain of Shinaar—a pyramid, or rather a mountain of masonry in that form, and on which it is supposed that, in after ages, Nebuchadnezzar raised the temple of Belus. This temple was of such prodigious magnitude, that having been destroyed by Xerxes, it cost Alexander, who intended to rebuild it, the labour of 1600 men for two months, in merely removing the rubbish caused by its destruction.
Of all these immense buildings, the traces can now be scarcely distinguished; confused heaps of bricks extending many miles, and grown over with grass, still exercise the ingenuity of travellers and antiquaries. In this dreary waste, there are, however, three very conspicuous mounds. The principal one, now called the Birs Nimrod, is supposed to be the temple of Belus. Ker Porter says that, in passing this barren tract, his eyes ranged on all sides, for something to point out the remains of this once imperial city; but all was withered and gone, and comparatively level with the horizon, except where the gigantic Birs Nimrod presented itself, “standing in the solitary waste, like the awful figure of Prophecy, pointing to the fulfilment of her word.”
The two other mounds of ruins are supposed to be the citadel and the palace. The former is of an oblong shape, and flat at the summit; and several excavations which have been made in it by the Turks, when searching for hidden treasures, are now occupied by wild beasts. In his second visit, his party suddenly halted, on seeing several objects moving about the summit, which they at first imagined to be Arabs; but which were soon discovered to be lions.