While gliding down the fourth Bible river, the Euphrates, the moon came up and seemed to turn its soft face upon the silence and as I began singing "Old Black Joe," the jackals along the shore joined in, possibly thinking by my voice that we were all descendants from one father. All were soon asleep but the oarsmen and myself, and I became lonesome as I thought of the days of the Aecadian priesthood, the Babylonian kings, Ezekiel and his people, Alexander the Great, who died here, all felled by the sickle of the reaper, Time, and here in silence I seemed to ask, "Where have they gone?"

We arrived at Babylon at three o'clock in the morning, when I was given the bed of Mr. Nelson, the hospitable German explorer, and the next morning we took in the ruins, and slept in Hille the next night. The following day we rode on donkeys to Burr's Nimrod, a wonderful ruins built of pot-shaped bricks, each weighing several tons. The tower or temple Ziggurat must have been built at the top of an artificial mountain on the plain, about seven or eight miles from the ruins of Babylon. Many think that the ancient city like Nineveh extended beyond Burr's Nimrod. From Burr's Nimrod on camels we rode to Chuffel, a village on the Chebar River, where we entered Ezekiel's tomb, of which the Mohammedons allow no Jew to enter. Still around the open space there were several tents occupied by orthodox Jews, who had come from afar to worship at the shrine of their beloved ancestors.