Chapter LI: Hung Chang (3)

It has been found that more water pours into the ocean through the Congo's mouth, which is six miles wide, than from all the other rivers in Africa together. It is second among the world's rivers, and the dark detritus it carries to the Atlantic has been distinctly traced on the ocean bed for six hundred miles from the land. Some geographers still believed thirty years ago that all the waters of its upper basin might be tributary to the Nile. Map-makers have been kept very busy recording discoveries on the Congo. About one hundred explorers, some of them missionaries and many employees of the Congo Free State, have mapped the whole basin along its water-courses, and discovered the ultimate source of its main stream. Our ideas of the hydrography of this great basin have been revolutionized since Stanley, second only to Livingstone among the great African explorers, in 1877 revealed the course of the main river.

On his map, for example, he showed the southern tributaries as probably flowing nearly due north; but all except one of these rivers rise in the east and flow far to the west. When Wissmann was sent to the Upper Kassai to follow it to the Congo, he was greatly surprised to find himself floating westward week after week. When he reached the Congo a steamboat was waiting for him at Equatorville, two hundred miles further up the river, where he was expected to emerge. Schweinfurth believed the Welle Makua flowed north to Lake Chad on the edge of the Sahara; seventeen years later, after six or seven explorers had tried to solve the problem, the river was found to be the upper part of the Mobangi tributary of the Congo, larger than any rivers of Europe, excepting the Volga and Danube. While Stanley was for five years planting his stations on the Congo, he knew nothing of this great tributary, 1,500 miles long, whose mouth was hidden by a cluster of islands which his steamers repeatedly passed. Missionary Grenfell, on his little steamer, was ascending the Congo one day, when accidentally he got into the mouth of the Mobangi and went on for one hundred miles before he discovered that he had left the main river. Few explorers have unwittingly stumbled upon so rich a geographical prize.

While exploratory enterprises have been centred largely in tropical Africa, no part of the continent has been neglected. We now know that large areas of the Sahara are underlaid by waters which need only be brought to the surface to cover the desert around them with verdure; that most of the rain falling on the south slopes of the Atlas Mountains sinks into the earth to impermeable strata of rock, along which it makes its way far out into the desert; that where the surface is depressed so that these waters come near to it, there are wells for the refreshment of the camel caravans, and oases, blooming islands of green, in the sterile wastes; and that artesian wells bring inexhaustible supplies of water within reach, so that millions of date palms have been planted along the northern edge of the desert in southern Algiers and Tunis, making these regions the largest sources of the world's supply of dates.

It has also been discovered why there are very large areas of dry or desert lands in Africa. The Sahara and the southwest of Africa are deserts because the prevailing winds, the carriers of moisture, blow towards the sea instead of away from it, and consequently are always dry. The winds from the Indian Ocean crossing the highlands of Abyssinia are wrung nearly dry while passing the mountains, and so Somaliland and the lowlands to the south of Abyssinia are parched.

It has been found that the most of South Africa stands so high above the sea that the influences of a temperate climate are projected far towards the Equator; so that many white men, women, and children are living and thriving on farms in Mashonaland, seven degrees of latitude nearer the equator than the south end of Florida. This fact will profoundly influence the development of South Africa. It is to be the home of millions of the white race, the seat of a highly civilized empire, whose business relations with the rest of the world will be to the advantage of every trading nation. The presence of these millions of toilers will vitally affect the work of developing tropical Africa which is now absorbing such enormous treasure and energy; for South Africa is to be brought by railroads to the very doors of the tropical zone.

It is hoped that such facts as these, even though very briefly stated, may convey broadly a correct impression of the magnitude of African exploration, since its revival about the time that Livingstone died. It is impossible in brief space to signalize the good work that many of the most conspicuous pioneers have done. The world rendered tardy tribute to the notable achievements of some of them. When Rebmann discovered Kilimanjaro, not far from the equator, and told of the snows that crown the loftiest of African summits, it was decided by British geographers that Rebmann's snow was probably an imaginary aspect. The snow was there, and plenty of it, but Rebmann died before justice was done to his faithful labors. When Paul du Chaillu described the Obongo dwarfs of West Africa, his narrative was discredited; but four or five groups of dwarfs, probably numbering many thousands, are now known to be scattered from the lower border of Abyssinia to the Kalahara desert in the far south. The ancients had heard of the dwarfs, but the geographers of the eighteenth century expunged from the maps of Africa about all that the geographers of Greece and Rome, as well as those of later times, placed on them; and the nineteenth century was slow in crediting the early investigators even with statements that were wholly or approximately accurate.

A curious history is connected with the discovery of the northeastern group of pygmies, a little south of Abyssinia. No white man had ever seen them, but about fifteen years ago Dr. Henry Schlichter, of the British Museum, collected all the information which natives had given to missionaries, traders, and explorers of the existence of these little people some hundreds of miles from the sea. Sifting all this evidence, he concluded that these dwarfs really existed, and that they lived in a region which he marked on the map north of Lake Stefanie. Donaldson Smith had not heard of Schlichter's paper, and knew nothing of these dwarfs, but he found them in 1895 in the region which Schlichter had indicated as their probable habitat.

The broadest generalization with regard to the African tribes is that which separates most of the peoples south of the Sahara Desert into two great groups,--the Negro tribes, whose habitat may be roughly indicated as extending between the Atlantic and Gallaland in East Africa, with the Sahara as their northern, and the latitude of the Cameroons as their southern, boundaries; and the Bantu tribes, occupying nearly all of Africa south of the Negroes. The distinction between these two great groups is not based upon special differences as to physical structure, mental characteristics, habits, or development, but depends solely upon philological considerations, the languages of the Negroes and the Bantus forming two distinct groups. Most of the slaves who were brought to our country were Negroes, while most of those transported to Latin America were from the Bantu tribes.

One fact that stood out above all others in the study of the African natives, was the remarkable prevalence of cannibalism in the Congo basin. In all his wanderings, Livingstone met only one cannibal tribe,--the Manyema living between Tanganyika and the Upper Congo; but though they are not found near the sources of the river, nor near its mouth, they occupy about one-half of the Congo basin. They are regarded with fear and abhorrence by all tribes not addicted to the practice. They number several millions. Instead of being the most debased of human creatures, many of them, in physical strength and courage, in their iron work, carving, weaving, and other arts, are among the most advanced of African tribes. The larger part of the natives in the service of the Congo Free State are from the cannibal tribes. The laws now impose severe penalties for acts of cannibalism, and the evil is decreasing as the influence of the state is extended over wider areas. A few isolated tribes along the Gulf of Guinea are also cannibals.

There is no doubt that the helpful influences of the Caucasian in every part of Africa so far outweigh his harmful influences that the latter are but a drop in the bucket in comparison. It is most unfortunate that a certain admixture of blundering, severity, brutality, and wickedness seems inseparable from the development of all the newer parts of the world. The demoralizing drink traffic, the scandalous injustice and cruelty of some of the agents of civilized governments, are not to be belittled or condoned. But there is also a very bright side to the story of the white occupancy of Africa.

The family of a deceased chief in Central Africa recently preserved his body unburied for fourteen months, in the hope that they might prevail upon the British Government to permit the sacrifice of women and slaves on his grave, that he might have companions of his own household in the other world. He was buried at last, without shedding a drop of blood. Human sacrifices are now punishable with death throughout a large part of barbarous Africa, and the terrible evil is being abated as fast as the influence of the European governments is extended over new regions. The practice of the arts of fetichism, a kind of chicanery, most injurious in its effects upon the superstitious natives, is now punishable throughout the Congo Free State and British Rhodesia. Arab slave-dealers no longer raid the Congo plains and forests for slaves, killing seven persons for every one they lead into captivity. Slave-raiding has been utterly wiped out in all parts of Africa, except in portions of the Sudan and other districts over which white rule has not yet been asserted. The Arabs of the Congo, who went there from East Africa solely that they might grow rich in the slave trade, are now settled quietly on their rice and banana plantations. The sale of strong drink has been restricted by international agreement to the coast regions, where the traffic has long existed, and its evils are somewhat mitigated there by the regulations now enforced. Fifty thousand Congo natives who would not carry a pound of freight for Stanley in 1880, are now in the service of the white enterprises, many of them working, not for barter goods, but for coin. Many of the missionary fields are thriving, and wonderful results have been achieved in some of them. In Uganda, where Stanley in 1875 saw King Mtesa impaling his victims, there are now ninety thousand natives professing Christianity, three hundred and twenty churches, and many thousands of children in the schools. Fifty thousand of the people can read. Between 1880 and 1882 Stanley carried three little steamboats around 235 miles of rapids to the Upper Congo. Eighty steamers are now afloat there, plying on nearly 8,000 miles of rivers, and connected with the sea by a railroad that has paid dividends from the day it was opened. At the end of 1890 there were only 5,813 miles of railroad in Africa. About 15,000 miles are now in operation, and the end of this decade is certain to see 25,000 miles of railroads. Trains are running from Cairo to Khartum, the seat of the Mahdist tyranny, in the centre of a vast region which, until recently, had been closed for many years to all the world.

These wonderful results are the fruits of the partition of Africa among the European states. With the exception of some waste regions in the Libyan desert, which no one has claimed, Morocco, Abyssinia, and Liberia, every square mile of African territory has been divided among European powers, either as colonies or as spheres of influence. The scramble of twenty years for African lands is at an end, there now being no valuable areas that are not covered by the existing agreements. It is no mere love of humanity that has impelled the European countries to divide these regions among themselves. We can scarcely realize the intensity of the struggle for existence in many of the overcrowded parts of Europe. Their factories are enormously productive, but their people will suffer for food unless they can export manufactures. The crying need for new markets, for new sources of raw material, drove these states into Africa. And we should be glad, for Africa's sake, that they have gone there, even though the desire to make money is one of the most powerful incentives.

It is under the protective aegis of these governments that explorers are settling down in smaller areas to see what may be found between the explored water-courses, to study the continent in detail, to give to our knowledge of Africa the scientific quality now required. The greatest geographical work there in recent years is the extension of a line of stations across tropical Africa by Commander Lemaire, each position astronomically fixed by the most careful methods, constituting a base-line east and west through Africa to which the scientific mapping of a very large area will be referred.

The day of the minuter study of the whole continent has now dawned, and we are witnessing a most notable work. All the colonial powers, and the Germans most conspicuously, are studying the economic questions relating to their African possessions. The suitability of climates for colonists, the essential rules of hygiene, the development of agriculture, labor supplies, transportation and commercial facilities, and many other problems are receiving the most careful attention. Experiment stations are maintained in the colonies and colonial schools at home, to fit young men for service in the field. The Germans have already proved that cotton and tobacco are certain to become profitable export crops.

The mine-owners of the Witwatersrand, on which Johannesburg stands, have begun a movement which they hope will result in the immigration of 100,000 white laborers to the mining field. We may look for remarkable development in South Africa, whose promise is larger than that of any other part of the continent. Whatever may be said of some of the methods by which the British have enlarged their empire, their rule has blessed the barbarous peoples whose countries they have absorbed. The task of improving the few millions of blacks in South Africa, and of developing the large and in some respects wonderful resources of that region, will be greatly assisted by the incoming of hundreds of thousands of Europeans, bringing with them the arts and other blessings of civilization. The future of none of the newer parts of the world is brighter with the hope of great development than the region between the Zambesi and the Cape of Good Hope.

In order to observe intelligently the progress of South Africa in coming years, the limitations as well as the advantages of the country must be kept in view. More than half of it, including the entire western half, is deficient in rainfall and can never be the home of a dense white population. Some mining will develop on those broad, dry plains and sandy wastes; some agriculture where irrigation is possible; and great wool-growing wherever thrive the nutritious grasses on which 13,000,000 sheep, scattered over the Karroo of Cape Colony, and 4,000,000 in the little Orange Free State, were grazing before the recent war. Wool-growing will always be the greatest grazing industry, though cattle and horses are raised in large numbers, and the fine, soft hair of the Angora goat is second only to wool in export importance.

A narrow strip of fine farm lands across the south end of Africa, another along the southern border of the former Boer republics, and a large area among the highlands of Mashonaland, far towards the equator, produce nearly all the crops of the temperate zones. It is not yet certain, however, that South Africa will ever raise enough wheat for a great white population. On the northern slopes of the hills, east and northeast of Cape Town, are thousands of acres of grapes. Cape Colony is becoming one of the important wine countries; and in February and March, large quantities of grapes, peaches, nectarines, and plums are placed in cool rooms on steamships and sent fresh to British markets almost before English fruit trees are in bloom.

East of the grape region is an area peculiarly adapted for the cultivation of tobacco; and east of the tobacco district, north of the coastal belt of wheat in a region of sandy scrub, the bush country, are the ostrich farms, in the hands mainly of men of considerable capital, who supply nearly all the feathers derived from the domesticated ostrich. The plumes are sometimes worth as much as $200 a pound, the ordinary feathers bringing from $5 to $7 a pound. Natal is unique in two of its agricultural industries, being the only colony that is producing tea and important quantities of cane sugar.

But gold, widely scattered over the country on the interior plateau, exceeds in value all the other exports together. The world never saw such a development of gold mining in a small area as has occurred on the Witwatersrand, where Johannesburg stands. The Witwatersrand (White River Slope) is a slight elevation, the water parting between rivers, about one and a half miles wide and 125 miles long. On twenty-five miles of the rand, at and near Johannesburg, more gold was produced in the year before the Boer war than was yielded by any other country in the world, The other rich mining regions of the Transvaal and other parts of South Africa have been completely dwarfed by the wonderful product of the rand. The surveys in Matabeleland and Mashonaland show gold-bearing areas 5,000 square miles in extent, which as yet have practically no development. The mining companies on the rand and elsewhere are now preparing for far larger operations than ever before.

The Kimberley diamond mines, turning out more than $20,000,000 worth of rough stones a year, supply nearly all the diamonds of commerce. Two other diamond centres in the Orange River Colony have scarcely been touched, and diamonds are found on the Limpopo River and in other regions where no mining has been undertaken. The minerals of South Africa, including iron and coal, bid fair to be for many years the largest sources of wealth; and in wool, hides, mohair, fresh fruits, and some other products, South Africa may rival other parts of the world.

There are no good natural harbors except Delagoa Bay in Portuguese East Africa, but by great expenditure the harbors of Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London, and Durban have been adapted for great commerce. Many persons mistakenly regard Cape Town as the chief commercial centre of South Africa. It is so only in respect of the export of gold and diamonds. As it is not centrally situated for business with the interior, more of the things that South Africa sells to and buys from the rest of the world, excepting gold and diamonds, pass through Port Elizabeth than through any other port. Here is centred the largest wholesale trade.

What South Africa needs is more railroads and more white labor. Manufacturing industries on an important scale are yet to come, for as yet the white population is too sparse to develop anything but the natural products of the country.

The broad summing up of the future work in Africa is that the native will be taught to help himself. The destiny of the continent depends largely upon his development, for great parts of Africa may never be adapted to become the home of many white men. The most powerful motives, philanthropic and selfish, incite and will sustain the work of helping these millions to rise to a higher plane of humanity. This work, now well begun, is the great task which in the present century will call for all the knowledge, patience, humanity, and justice that may be brought to bear upon the problem of reclaiming Africa.

AUTHORITIES.

Livingstone's "Missionary Travels," "A Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi," and "Last Journeys;" Blaikie's "Livingstone's Personal Life;" Stanley's "How I found Livingstone."

Stanley's "Through the Dark Continent," "The Congo and the Founding of its Free State," "In Darkest Africa;" Schweinfurth's "The Heart of Africa;" Burton's "The Lake Regions of Central Africa;" Speke's "Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile;" Thomson's "To the Central African Lakes and Back;" Barth's "Travels and Discoveries in Central Africa;" Theal's "Compendium of South African History;" Greswell's "Geography of Africa South of the Zambesi"; Noble's "The Redemption of Africa" (A History of African Missions).

No comprehensive compendium of the history of African exploration has yet been written. Our knowledge of the geography, peoples and resources of Africa is treated with considerable detail in a number of works such as Reclus's "Africa" (in "The Earth and Its Inhabitants") and Sievers's "Afrika" (German). A very large part of the exploratory enterprises in Africa have not been described in books, but only in the reports of the explorers, printed with their original maps in the publications of many geographical and missionary societies.

SIR AUSTEN HENRY LAYARD.

1817-1894.

MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY.

BY WILLIAM HAYES WARD, D.D., LL.D.

It was twenty-three long centuries ago that a Greek soldier of fortune, who had the honor to be also a disciple of Socrates, was leading ten thousand mercenaries back to their native land after their famous failure to set the Younger Cyrus on the throne of Persia. Clearchus and the other generals had been treacherously murdered. Dispirited, almost hopeless, on their way to the longed-for Black Sea, in anticipation of the perilous and tedious journey, past wild mountains and wilder Kurds, they toiled up the valley of the Tigris River. Of one incident of their journey their historian and leader makes no record. They reached the spot where now stands the city of Mosul. On the bank of the river their eyes fell on a bare and lofty hill. They did not know, they never suspected,--Xenophon wrote no word of it,--that under that hill lay buried the ruins of one of the mightiest conquering cities that had ever ruled the world. From the palaces of that hill, Ninus and Semiramis and Sardanapalus had led their conquering armies, all now covered with silence.

Two centuries earlier, in 606 B.C., there had occurred one of the most tremendous catastrophes recorded in all the grim annals of war. After a thousand years of primacy in the East, but twenty years after the death of Sardanapalus (the Greek name of Asshurbanapal), who had carried his armies to Egypt and had made his capital the centre of the world's culture and magnificence, as it was of its cruel and hated power, Nineveh was captured, buried, and utterly desolated by a horde of savage Scythians from the mountains of the north and east, such people as we now call the Kurds. Its palaces had no lofty Greek columns to stand for memorials, as at Palmyra or Persepolis; and when the outer casings of brick and alabaster were cracked away, and the ashes of the upper stories and the clay of the inner constructions, soaked by the rains, covered the ruins of temple and palace, nothing was left to mark the site but the grass-covered hill. No wonder that the learned scholar of Socrates saw nothing, knew nothing of the city, most glorious and most detested of all the cities of the earth. But in its day the overthrow of Nineveh and the destruction of the Assyrian Empire had been the most terrible event in the world's history. How the Hebrew prophets gloated over it! "Where now is the den of the lions, and the feeding-place of the young lions, where the lion and the lioness walked, the lion's whelp, and none made them afraid? Wo to the bloody city; it is all full of lies and rapine; the prey departeth not. The noise of the whip, and the noise of the rattling of wheels, and prancing horses, and bounding chariots, the horsemen mounting, and the flashing sword, and the glittering spear, and a multitude of slain, and a great heap of corpses, and there is no end of the bodies. There is no assuaging of the hurt; thy wound is grievous; all that hear the report of thee clap their hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?" And another prophet had uttered the curse: "The pelican and the porcupine shall lodge in the capitals thereof; their voice shall sound in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds; for he hath laid bare the cedar-work. This is the joyous city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, 'I am, and there is none besides me!' How is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! Every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand."

Thus fell Nineveh, amid the universal rejoicing of the nations, and thus, seventy years later, fell Babylon also, which, in the short interval, Nebuchadnezzar had made more magnificent than even Nineveh had been, beautified for its capture by Cyrus. But before Babylon was the capital of Chaldea, or Nineveh the capital of Assyria, the city of Calah had been the seat of its kings, and a mighty mound--they call it Nimroud now--"as high as St. Paul's steeple," old travellers loved to say--marks the place on the east bank of the Tigris, twenty miles south of Nineveh; and, before Calah, Assyria had an earlier capital forty miles still nearer the Babylonian border, at Asshur, now Kalah-Shergat, on the west of the Tigris; and each capital had its palaces and records, and all are now equally buried in clay and utter oblivion. And before the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar, and long centuries before Nineveh or Calah or Asshur, there had been mighty kingdoms in Babylonia, of which the world had quite forgot the names, only vague rumors remaining in song or legend of Nimrod and Chedorlaomer and Ur of the Chaldees,--only what was preserved in the dimmest records of the Hebrew Scriptures. Empires were lost, buried in chiliads of forgetfulness; would they ever be recovered?

And how much else was lost, what kingdoms, what empires buried before Hebrew or Greek history began to take notice of the world outside and put them in books, no one knew, no one knows even yet, although so much has been found. The fame of Egypt was never quite forgotten, nor all its history, for Egypt was the world's granary, and closely accessible to the ships of Corinth and Rome; and Egypt never lost her civilization in all her long succession of enslavement. But what memory had been kept of the Ionia and Greece of the days before Homer? What of the early civilization of Cyprus and Crete? Only the name of Minos, a judge in Hell. What of Persia and Elam? Were they uninhabited before the times of Xerxes and Cyrus? And who were these kings, Cyrus and Xerxes, whose names burst upon us with dim light out of a black antiquity? Even they were but shadows on a screen, just seen and disappearing. What kings and kingdoms came before them and passed away? Has history no record? Not a word. Only black vacuity has been left behind them. And there was that other empire of the East, that of the Hittites, which we now know ruled Asia Minor and Syria and contested the rule of the world with Assyria and Egypt centuries before Agamemnon and Achilles, but so utterly buried and forgotten that not a line of its history was left, not even enough to let the sharpest scholar ask a question or suspect that it ever built capitals and fought victories and produced a civilization the harvest of which we still enjoy. Nothing was left of them but their names in a Hebrew list of tribes,--"Amorites and Jebusites and Hivites and Hittites."

Yet all these lost tribes, nay, lost nations, had left their records behind them, only they were buried under ground and out of sight. What a travesty it is on history and civilization, what an impeachment of the glory of these later Christian centuries, that the lands which these old empires crowded with a busy population should now be among the most desolate and inaccessible on the face of the earth! There we see the curse of the Moslem religion, and still more of the Turkish government. Wherever the Turk has carried the sword and the Koran, there is blight and death. Only as soldiers and scholars of Europe have forced their way into these seats of ancient empires has it been possible to ask and learn what is buried beneath their gray desolation.

The man who did more than any other to awaken the interest of the world in the search for forgotten empires was Sir Henry Layard, the excavator of Nineveh. But before his day another man had startled the world with what we may call the discovery of Egypt. That man was Napoleon Bonaparte, the man whose sword was a ploughshare turning up the fallow fields of Europe, and sowing strange crops of tyranny and liberty, and whose ambition it was to set up a new throne in the land of the Pharaohs and Ptolemies. The mighty ruins of Karnak and the imperishable pyramids filled him with amazement, and he set the scholars of France at work to publish in massive folios the wonders of that most ancient land. Then was found the Rosetta Stone, with its inscription in two languages,--Greek, which any scholar could read, and the Egyptian hieroglyphics, which no living man could read. But here was the key. The words _Ptolemy_ and _Cleopatra_ were in the Greek text, and it was not hard to find what were the combinations of characters that stood for these words in the Egyptian. The letters _p, t_, and _l_ were in both names. The hieroglyphic signs found in both names must be these three letters. That beginning gave all the other signs in both words, and the rest of the alphabet soon followed. Justly great is the fame of the Frenchman Champollion, who has the honor of having first deciphered and read this lost language, and opened to us the secret treasures of its history and religion.

But with the exploration of Egypt the scholarship of the world was satisfied for fifty years. No one seemed to think to ask what might be hid under the soil of nearer Palestine and Syria and Asia Minor; much less did they seek to uncover the buried capitals of Assyria and Babylonia. Scholarship was devoted to books, to old manuscripts in convent libraries, to recovering what the wise men of Greece and Rome had written, and trying to wrest new facts out of their blundering old compilations of ancient history. It did not occur to them that a hundred kings and ten thousand merchants and priests might have left the stories of their conquests or contracts or liturgies, unrotted in the wet soil, imperishably preserved to be the record of commerce and empires as old and as great as those of Egypt, but far deeper covered with oblivion. But there they were, kept safe for twenty, thirty, fifty centuries, until the man should come whose mission it was to find them.

More than one such man came in the middle of the last century, but one man is pre-eminent, and typical of all the rest, Sir Austen Henry Layard. Before him one Frenchman, M. Paul Émile Botta, had made a fine dash on a palace city a dozen miles north of Nineveh, and had opened wonders such as the world had never seen before. But the man whose energy was fullest of impulse, whose enthusiasm compelled British Ambassadors and Ministers and Parliaments to do his bidding, who aroused the world to the importance of the exploration and disinterment of the monuments of Babylonia and Assyria, was the Englishman Layard.

He had a youthful passion for adventure, and slender means to gratify it. I wish you could see him as he is pictured in the volume which gives the story of his early adventures, before he had settled on his life-work of exploration. There he stands clad in his Bakhtiyari costume, the dress of a mountain tribe in Persia which asserted its independence of Teheran. It is a well-knit frame, fit to endure hardships. He stands holding the tall matchlock, the curved scimetar by his side, and the long pistol and the dagger in his belt. Above the yellow shoes and parti-woven stockings a red silk robe falls to his ankles, and over that a green silk garment reaches to his knees, and yet over that a shorter and richly embroidered coat, with open sleeves, is held close about the body by a wide silken sash woven in the brightest of red and gold, and holding the weapons attached to his waist. On his head is a low flat cap, visorless in front, but with a broad bow in place of a feather, all striped with the richest embroidery, and with a wide tassel of the same material falling far down his back. But the face, with its short beard dyed dark with henna, and its blue eyes, is not that of a warrior, but of a serious scholar or diplomatist. And he needed all the force of courage and all the arts of diplomacy for the work he had to do.

Layard's early training was in the line of preparation for his life's work. Much of his boyhood was spent in Italy, where he acquired a taste for the fine arts, and as much knowledge of them as a child could obtain who was constantly in the society of artists and connoisseurs. At about the age of sixteen he was sent to England to study the law, for which he was destined by his parents. After six years in the office of a solicitor, and in the chambers of an eminent conveyancer,--for that is the way that lawyers were educated then,--he determined to leave England and seek a career elsewhere. He had a relative in Ceylon, who gave him hopes of securing a position there, and for Ceylon he started. A friend of his, ten years older, was bound for the same destination, both fond of adventure, and they agreed to go together, and to go as far as they could by land instead of taking the long sea journey around the Cape of Good Hope. Across Europe they passed to Constantinople, through Austria, Dalmatia, Montenegro, Albania, and Bulgaria; thence across Asia Minor to Syria and Palestine; thence to Aleppo and down the Tigris to Baghdad. It was an extraordinary and adventurous journey, often dangerous; but greater danger was to follow. Layard had learned some Turkish, and now he spent the long weeks in Baghdad in the study of Persian; his companion was quite familiar with Arabic. Before they left England they had received good advice from Sir John MacNeill, the British representative at the court of the Shah: "You must either travel as important personages, with a retinue of servants and an adequate escort, or alone, as poor men, with nothing to excite the cupidity of the people amongst whom you will have to mix. If you cannot afford to adopt the first course, you must take the latter." The latter they were forced to take.

Many a young man has the gift to acquire languages--almost any Oriental can talk three or four--and the ability to rough it and live on the fare of the people, though barbarous; and many a man has the spirit of adventure; but this young man had one peculiar and unusual qualification that directed him to his future career. As a child, he had read the "Arabian Nights" with intense delight, with their stories centred about Baghdad. Then every book of Eastern adventure, every bit of travel in Syria, Arabia, or Persia that he could find he had eagerly devoured. It was his day and night's longing that he might visit strange lands of history and make explorations and discoveries. So wherever he was, he visited every ruin and tried to copy every inscription. If his companion would not turn aside to visit some region of renown and danger, he would go alone and join him later. As they came down the river Tigris in their boat, they passed the immense mound of Nimroud, and so impressed was Layard by it that he then, scarce twenty-three years old, resolved that some day he would search and learn what was hidden under it; but little did he imagine what wonderful monuments he was to find there only a few years later.

Without a servant, as poor men, in a caravan of fanatical and hostile Persian pilgrims returning from the shrines, just travellers trying to go by land through Persia and Afghanistan to India and Ceylon, they left Baghdad. It was a time of unusual danger, for the British Minister had been recalled from the Persian Court, and war with England was threatened. They were taken for spies, and sent to the presence of the Shah, and forbidden to follow the route they had chosen and which had been marked out for them by the Council of the Royal Geographical Society, to report on rivers and mountains and ruins not yet explored. They were insulted and robbed, and their lives were often in danger; but at last they received from the Shah their firmans. Now they separated. His companion felt that he must go by the quickest route to his destination; but Layard had no definite date before him, and he was anxious to perform the commissions of the Geographical Society, and so he plunged alone into fresh dangers.

But there is no space to tell the rest of the story of his adventures among the Bakhtiyari, of his copying of inscriptions, of his return to Baghdad and his decision to give up the plans of life in Ceylon, and of his return from Baghdad again to Shuster and Persepolis and other ancient cities of Persia, and his exploration of the Karun River and his geographical paper on the subject, his opening of British trade, and his return to Constantinople. At Mosul he found that M. Botta was planning to explore the mounds across the Tigris that covered ancient Nineveh, and he warmly encouraged his plans. At Constantinople he visited Sir Stratford Canning and delivered to him despatches that had been confided to his care, in view of a threatened war between Persia and Turkey. Here he was kept in the service of the British Embassy, and intrusted with important and delicate negotiations and investigations which were so highly appreciated by Sir Stratford that he kept him as his attaché.

Meanwhile M. Botta had begun his excavations of a palace of King Sargon at Khorsabad and was sending his reports and drawings to Paris. They were all sent by way of Constantinople, and, by M. Botta's generosity, were all seen by Mr. Layard. So deeply was he interested in them, and so intense was his desire to carry on excavations himself, that he secured his release from the Embassy, and also a grant of three hundred dollars from Sir Stratford's own purse, which, with what he could spare from his own money, would, he hoped, suffice to begin the work, when, if anything of value appeared, it was trusted that funds would be secured from English friends of Oriental learning. Thus, six years after leaving England, Mr. Layard, well equipped in knowledge of the people and in diplomatic experience, was ready to launch on his great career, which brought him fame and earned him the post in later years of British Ambassador at the Porte, which Sir Stratford had held, and--what is far greater--gave to the world the larger part of its knowledge of the lost empires of Assyria and Babylonia.

With these few hundred dollars, and contributing every penny of his own income, in October of 1845, he left Constantinople without companion or servant, went by steamer to Samsoun, and then as fast as post-horses could climb or gallop over mountains and plains, he reached Mosul in twelve days.

Here at last he was fitted for his task, supplied for the accomplishment of his passion. The Arabs say: "I had a horse, but no desert; I had a desert, but no horse; now I have a desert and a horse, and shall I not ride?" His boyhood, with the artists of Italy, and learning the languages of the continent, had fitted him for his task; then his study of all the books of Eastern travel, then half a year wandering with a trained companion through Asia Minor and Syria, scarcely leaving untrod one spot hallowed by tradition, or unvisited one ruin consecrated by history, with no protection but his arms, living with the people and learning their prejudices and customs. Then an irresistible desire had brought him to the regions beyond the Euphrates, and the mystery of Assyria, Babylonia, and Chaldea had fascinated him, so that he had visited the land of Nimrod, seen the site of their old buried capitals, had been the guest in the tents of Shammar and Aneyzah Arabs, and even passed on to see the famous forty columns of Chilminar, old Persian Persepolis, and to penetrate the mountain fastnesses where the Bakhtiyari maintained a perilous freedom. Never was man better trained by enthusiasm and experience for his task, and the late discoveries of M. Botta had inflamed his desire to surpass what his French friend had done.

His plan was not to begin excavations at Nineveh, opposite Mosul, but twenty miles south, at the great mound of Nimroud, which bore the name of the mighty hunter Nimrod. Xenophon and his Ten Thousand had seen and wondered at its pyramid. There he would be free from the army of mischievous spectators that would swarm from Mosul, had he selected the site of Nineveh, and from the constant interference of the Turkish governor. The Pasha at Mosul was a cruel scoundrel, who was robbing and killing the people as his whim or greed prompted, and had reduced the tribes of the neighborhood to a state of terror. Accordingly, Mr. Layard, who was armed with protecting letters from the British Ambassador and the Porte, thought it wise to conceal his purpose, let it be reported that he was going on a hunting expedition; and with a few tools and a supply of guns and spears, on the 8th of November, 1845, accompanied only by his cawass, the soldier attendant detailed for the protection of travellers, a servant, and one laborer, he floated down the Tigris, and in four hours reached the bourne of his long hopes. He had the mound, he had the money, and now he would dig.

The Arabs have strange stories of this ruin. The palace, they say, was built by Athur, the vizier of Nimrod. There Abraham brake in pieces the idols worshipped by the unbelievers. Nimrod was angry and waged war on the holy patriarch. Abraham prayed to God: "Deliver me, O God, from this man who worships stones, and boasts himself to be lord of all kings;" and God said to him, "How shall I punish him?" and the prophet answered, "To thee armies are as nothing, and the strength and power of men likewise. Before the smallest of thy creatures will they perish." And God was pleased at the faith of his servant, and he sent a gnat that vexed Nimrod day and night, so that he built himself a room of glass in that palace that he might dwell therein and shut out the insect. But the gnat entered also, and passed by his ear into his brain, upon which it fed, and increased day by day, so that the servants of Nimrod beat his head continually with a mallet that he might have some ease from his pain; but he died after suffering these torments four hundred years. And after him the mound was named Nimroud.

It was dark when Layard and his little company reached the place. They found near by a few huts occupied by poor Arabs, who had been harried by the Turkish Pasha. There they slept, or tried to sleep. But the explorer could not sleep. Hear him:--

"Hopes, long cherished, were now to be realized, or were to end in disappointment. Visions of palaces under ground, of gigantic monsters, of sculptured figures, and endless inscriptions, floated before me. After forming plan after plan for removing the earth and extricating these treasures, I fancied myself wandering in a maze of chambers from which I could find no outlet. Then, again, all was reburied, and I was standing on the grass-covered mound. Exhausted, I was at length sinking into sleep, when, hearing the voice of Awad, I rose from my carpet and joined him outside the tent. The day already dawned. The lofty cone and broad mound of Nimroud broke like a distant mountain on the morning sky."

Awad, his host, was a little chief among the Arabs, and was engaged to take charge of the diggers. The first morning he had six Arabs at work, and found alabaster slabs with cuneiform inscriptions. He was now sure he would succeed.

It is not necessary to give the diary of his work. To be sure, the villanous Pasha forbade him to continue, and recalled him to Mosul, but a new governor was sent from Constantinople, under whom he had no difficulty. A great palace had been found, and chamber after chamber was excavated, the walls covered with bas-reliefs and inscriptions. Then came strange, gigantic lions with human heads, that had been placed by the old Assyrian king to guard the entrances to his court. What was the amazement of the Arabs and Turks cannot be told. First, the head was uncovered. It stood out from the earth, placid and vast. Hear Layard tell the story. He had been away to visit a neighboring chief:--

"I was returning to the mound, when I saw two Arabs urging their mares to the top of their speed. 'Hasten, O Bey,' exclaimed one of them, 'hasten to the diggers, for they have found Nimrod himself. By Allah! it is wonderful, but it is true! We have seen him with our eyes! There is no God but God!' And both joining in this pious exclamation, they galloped back to the tent."

Layard hastened to the trench, and there saw what he knew to be the head of a gigantic lion or bull, such as Botta had uncovered at Khorsabad. It was in admirable preservation. The expression was calm, yet majestic, and the outline of the features showed a freedom and knowledge of art that was scarcely to be looked for at so early a period. Says the explorer:--

"I was not surprised that the Arabs had been amazed and terrified at this apparition. It required no stretch of imagination to conjure up the most strange fancies. This gigantic head, blanched with age, thus rising from the bowels of the earth, might well have belonged to one of those fearful beings which are pictured in the traditions of the country as appearing to mortals, slowly ascending from the regions below. 'This is not the work of men's hands,' exclaimed Sheikh Abdurrahman, who had galloped to the mound on the first news, 'but of those infidel giants of whom the Prophet, peace be with him! has said that they were higher than the tallest date-tree; this is one of the idols which Noah, peace be with him! cursed before the flood!' In this opinion all the bystanders concurred."

The Arabs have a ready explanation for every fresh discovery. When some years later Mr. Layard's assistant and successor in the work of excavation, Mr. Rassam, uncovered, at Abu-habba, a remarkable bas-relief with the figure of the seated Sun-god and three approaching worshippers, the Arab diggers rushed to him, declaring that they had found Noah and his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet, and demanded a sheep to make a feast.

The report of the wonderful discovery of a royal palace, evidently older than those of Nineveh, with magnificent decorations in alabaster and cuneiform inscriptions, reached beyond Mosul to Constantinople. Sir Stratford Canning was delighted with the result of his expedition. He had a passion for discovery as well as diplomacy, and it is to him that the British Museum is indebted for the priceless marbles of Halicarnassus. He now obtained for Mr. Layard a firman, permitting him to make what excavations he wished. Then the news reached London, and the British Museum made a grant to support the work. All difficulties were now removed. Conditions were even more favorable for him than they are now. There was then no Imperial Museum in Constantinople to which all objects found must be taken, but those that dug had the right to carry off their prizes to London or Paris.

To tell the story of the further excavations is unnecessary. It is all given in Layard's two splendid volumes, "Nineveh and its Remains," and "Babylon and Nineveh;" and the bas-reliefs, statues, bronzes, ivories, and inscriptions are magnificently reproduced in great folio volumes. From Nimroud he went back to Mosul, and there opened the two mounds opposite of Kuyunjik and Neby-Yunus, the site of old Nineveh. There more palaces and friezes were found of other kings. Then he went back to London, closing his successful campaign, more profitable if not more glorious than those of war, and published the story of his work. Its effect was marvellous. No such popular book of travels had ever appeared; for it was a story of adventure, and also of strange discovery. Mr. Layard had not suspected that he had the literary gift, but he had it in rare measure. He had gained an inner view of the heart of tribes, Moslem and Christian and semi-pagan, by his sympathy with them and his knowledge of their tongues. He had lived in their tents and huts. He had saved them from persecution by Turkish governors. Their gratitude to him was beyond words, and he told their story with affection and enthusiasm. Then his discoveries were in the lands made historic not only by the campaigns of Xenophon and Alexander, but made almost sacred by the Bible history. These were the lands whence came the armies that fought with Israel. These were the kings whose wars are told in the Jewish records; and the annals of these kings were found in their palaces, and they gave full accounts of wars of which the Bible had given the outline. Piety and learning joined to give extraordinary interest to these discoveries and to this report of them. Mr. Layard found himself famous, and the monuments he was bringing to the British Museum were, and still are, the most extraordinary and fascinating in all its corridors.

Of course, a new grant was made in behalf of the British Museum, and of course he went back to continue and extend his researches. Now he wished to go further south, beyond Nimroud to Kalah Shergat, the yet earlier capital of Assyria; and yet further to Babylon, that he might see and test the multitude of mounds of ancient Chaldea, the real land of Nimrod, the seat of Eden, and the Tower of Babel, far more ancient than any one of the three capitals of Assyria. While he did scarce more than to visit and report on the Babylonian mounds, his diggings in Nineveh itself were of vast importance, for there he found the library of Asshurbanabal, on clay tablets, which has given us our chief knowledge of the literature and learning of the ancient East. In 1852 he returned to England to publish his "Monuments of Nineveh," and left the further exploration to his able lieutenant, Mr. Rassam, and to a noble succession of explorers who should follow, and to a no less noble line of scholars who should interpret the inscriptions and recover the history of the nations; so that we now know more exactly the history of Babylonian and Assyrian kings, and from more authentic records, and more completely the social condition and business life of the countries, than we do the history of Greece, or the life of the Greeks even of the time of Pericles, and that, too, for a period of three thousand years.