OUR NIGHT'S LODGING.

167

hardness and unevenness of the ill-paved floor. If to these grievances were added the attacks of myriads of fleas, which did not leave us till they had marked us like lepers, it will be allowed that we must have passed any thing but an agreeable night.

168

BIR-IUNUS.

CHAPTER IX.

Bir-iunus-Caravans of Persian Pilgrims-Scriptural Illustrations-Mode of Travelling-Women-Corpses -Coffins-Iskanderia Earthenware Coffins-Mohowel-An old Man and his Wives-Distant appearance of the Ruins of Babylon-Reasons for supposing the Ruins to be those of Babylon-Causes of Deterioration-Mujillebe Mound-Illustration of the Prophecy of Isaiah-Hilleh - Population - Musjid Eshams— Babylonian inscriptions-Bricks-Cylinders-Throwing the Jereed-Sham fight-Tower of Babel-Babylonian boats-Earthenware tombs-Statue of a LionHanging Gardens—Palace.

AT daylight the following morning, we left our comfortless lodging, and stopped to breakfast at Bir-iunus, another caravanserai, eight miles distant. At these halting-places, the traveller is always sure of being supplied, at a

SCRIPTURAL ILLUSTRATIONS.

169

moderate price, with eggs, poultry, dates, sweet limes, and generally with mutton and kid.

We saw, in the course of the day, various caravans of Persians; some going to, and others returning from their pilgrimage. We were much interested, as well by viewing the picturesque appearance of these passing groups, as by the recollection that we were witnessing a mode of travelling which, from the predatory habits of the unchanged wanderers of the desert, has been rendered necessary, from the most remote periods of history to the present hour. "In Arabia shall ye lodge, O ye travelling companies of Dedanim."*

The higher class of Persians were generally mounted on good horses, unencumbered by any burthen except the apparatus of the kuleoon, or Persian pipe. Two or three servants, mounted on horses lightly laden with baggage, formed the suite of one person. The equi

* Is. xxi. 13.

170

MODE OF TRAVELLING.

pages are always very light-a Persian rejecting, as superfluous, many travelling articles that would with us be deemed indispensable. The bed, for instance, is a small carpet of the size of a hearth-rug, which familiarizes the injunction of our Saviour to the man whom he had healed, "Take up thy bed, and walk.”*

In each caravan, the women comprised about a third of the party. The wives of the rich rode astride on horses; those of the poorer class were either placed on the baggage-cattle, or seated in a pair of covered panniers slung across a mule-one woman in each pannier. They wore loose trowsers gathered in at the instep, and terminating in a sock. The upper part of their person was enveloped in loose robes; some of white, others of blue check: their veils, differing from those of the Bagdad women, were composed of a piece of open network (half the circumference of the face),

*Matt. ix. 6.

through which they could see and breathe. It was, possibly, a veil of a similar kind, to which Abimelech alludes, when he figuratively tells Sarah that her brother (Abraham) was to her "a covering of the

eyes.

"*

The most remarkable, and not the least numerous part of this assemblage, was the crowd of defunct Shias, whose corpses were going to be buried at the tomb of the patron Saint. These bodies were enclosed in common wooden coffins, in shape and size not unlike those used by the lower orders in England: two of them were slung across one mule. One man had generally the charge of six or eight bodies.

The men who convey these corpses to Meshed Ali are not the relations of the deceased parties, but persons who gain a livelihood by this peculiar occupation.

No order of march seemed to be observed in the caravans-the living and dead were in

* Gen. xx. 16.