Note 146 — RECORDS OF THE PAST.—NINEVEH AND BABYLON.

Layard. Alexander the Great, after he had transferred his seat of empire to the East, so fully appreciated the importance of those great works that he ordered them to be cleansed and repaired, and superintended the work in person, steering his boat with his own hand through the channels. Similar operations undertaken now would again restore to Mesopotamia its old fertility, and fit Babylon, not only for regaining her place as the emporium of the Eastern world, but for becoming the great entrepot of commerce between the West and East, which will ere long, in consequence of the introduction of railways, again flow into its old overland route by Palmyra, through the deserts, from the Levant to the head of the Persian Gulf.