What a magnificent pile it must have been in those long-forgotten days when the legions of Semiramis marched, in glittering array, through the long colonnade to worship the Moon-god, Sin, beneath the statues of illustrious Babylonians! or when their luxurious ruler, enthroned a queen in the hearts of her people, and dowered with charms that inspired to heroism, flashed through those great corridors in her gilded chariot, surrounded by her crowd of martial courtiers and fair slaves! or when, with bare arms and golden helmet on her head, with all the pomp of war, she sallied forth on her fleet steed, caparisoned in crimson and gold, to review and harangue her warriors on the plain.
Allah had destroyed it because it was ungodly.
No trace of the presence of living man had I discovered, and I began to wonder whether, after all, this Land of the No Return was uninhabited; for was it not likely that in the ages that had passed since its discovery by Babylon’s queen, the colony, like the once-powerful race beside the Euphrates, had dwindled away and become entirely extinct! There were no signs of these ruins having been visited, no trace of any recent encampment, or the dead ashes of the fires of recent travellers. Upon the stretch of bare, stony ground, before the half-ruined gateway which would have served as a good camping-ground, I searched diligently, but discovered nothing that proved the existence of inhabitants; therefore, wearied and footsore, I at length threw myself down at the base of one of the giant monoliths, and with part of my gandoura over my face to shield it from the evil influence of the moonbeams, sank into heavy, dreamless slumber.
Chapter Thirty Five.
A Visitant from the Mists.
Day had dawned fully three hours ere I arose. The great ruins, revealed by the brilliant morning sun, were much more extensive than I had at first believed. For fully half a mile mighty columns rose, here and there, like gigantic, moveless giants; many had fallen, and their walls of enormous blocks and their prostrate pillars looked up piteously to the day. Time alone had worn down their rigid strength, and swept the capstones from the towers. Time, too, had clad some of them in a disintegrating mantle of green.
There was not one of the hundred columns and monoliths in which did not lurk some tale, or many tales, of loyalty, or treason, or despair. There was not one of the five great gates I could distinguish whose portal had not swung open wide for processions of triumphal pageantry, of exalted grief, of pagan pomp, or military expedition. Thick as the leaves of the climbing plants, festooning crevice, niche and broken parapet, must be the legends, traditions and true tales that enwrapped those walls if man still inhabited that land. Upon the stones, chipped with surprising neatness and regularity, were many uneffaced inscriptions; the pompous eulogies therein contained being the only epitaphs the long-dead founders of the Kingdom of Ea possessed. This prodigious pile, useless centuries ago, torn by earthquakes and half levelled by time, was indeed a fitting monument to the great Semiramis, the self-indulgent Queen, the conqueror of all lands from the Indus to the Mediterranean, and builder of Babylon, the most extensive and wonderful capital in the world.
At last, turning my back upon the desolate scene, I went forward and commenced to ascend the steep hillside. It was a stiff ascent, but, on gaining the summit, I looked down upon a panorama of beauty impossible to adequately describe. Streams, forests and verdant valleys stretched out below, bounded far away by a range of fantastic mountains rising in finger points in all directions. Proceeding in search of the mysterious, unknown city, which, according to the inscription, lay in the direction of prayer, I descended the steep hill, passed through vast entanglements of jungle in the valleys, suddenly coming across a delightful stream watering a narrow valley with precipitous walls of rock on either side, and densely filled with all kinds of tropical vegetation. I ate some bananas, revelled in the luxury of a bath, and then continued my journey towards the sunrise by plunging into a forest of quol-quol trees, some of which reached to the height of sixty feet, stretching out their weird arms in every direction. The quol-quol is an uncanny-looking tree, exuding a poisonous, milky gum, which is exceedingly dangerous. The Dervishes, in making their roads around Khartoum and Omdurman, had much difficulty with this tree, for the milk from it, if it squirts into the eyes when the tree is cut, produces blindness. Beneath the trees were flowering, rich-coloured gladioli, long, hanging orchids, sugar plants, and many thorny trees of a species I had never before seen.