San Marcos free press. [volume] (San Marcos, Tex.) 1877-1892, 1882-02-16
FINDS NEAR BAGDAp.
-. rhousand Tablets In nm Enormous Building
''' Possibly Antedliuvlan Records.
London Timss.


IN Monday evening, during a dis
ION which took PLACE on a paper
uaJ AZ the Victoria Institute, Mr.. Ras-
IeaS the well-known discoverer of
sun a,,r;on relics, said: I'm March last
n .,snt out again to the East, rs you
Sunw I am always doing for the pur-
se Of finding out the old cities which
f. hurled there. AS / was journeying
~ one occasion in pursuit of this OBJ
:aa, met with an Arab who told me
!Sot he knew of an old ruined city, the
remains of which were to be found
m;tbin five hours of Bagdad-that is
:" cav taking the compilation of three
m;les an hour, the place he knew of
vas fifteen miles from Bagdad. AS we
we're travelling along the route pointed
ont by the Arab, We came at distance
If four hours journeying upon an old
rnin that l had never seen-a ruin of
Great magnitude-s large, indeed, that
q must be about three miles in circum-
fsrance.. I at first thought that this
was the place of which my guide had
snoken. We went onward, and at last
tbe Arab showed me most wonder
ful ruin. set to work and excavated
there, but found nothing of any anti
ouarian value,
aI afterward went to the place I had
frat seen, and commenced thorough
search there. The result was that after
digging for four days We came upon
the tor of some walls. This induced
us 10 persevere with increased ardor,
and we soon found that we had come
mon an enormous building, in which
we began to find inscriptions. l may
here say thatI am not an Assyrian read
or. am only discoverer of Assy-
rian relics, which 1 send to the British
Museum, where those who have made
Assyriology study interpret the in
scriptions L find. We first of all dis
covered four rooms, and then came
upon the fifth. They were what I
should call generally of the Assyrian
or Babylonian order, and paved with
bricks or stones; but the fifth room was
paved with asphalt, the discovery of
which brought to my mind Solomon's
SAYING: "There is nothing new under
the sun" Previous to this 1 had always
thought that asphalt was a modern in
yention. Singular as this discovery
was, we dug through the asphalt, and
in short time we were rewarded by
coming upon a Golfer on which we
found inscriptions. From this Golfer
we took two cylinders. These were
covered with Inscriptions which are
supposed to be the most important re-
cords of the oldest city in the world,
founded, as historians tell us, by Noah
after the deluge, and where, according
to tradition, Noah buried the antedilu
Wan records. Well, 1 had to come
home; but I left some workmen con-
timing the operations at the spot, and
I have ascertained that they have found,
after few days more digging, that in
one of the rooms there was channel,
and inside that channel there were re-
cords, inscribed on nearly 10000 tablets.
These tablets are all coming to England,
but we can not, of course, as yet say
what they contain. They may contain
something of even greater value than
anything that has hitherto been discov-
cred in the course of our Eastern re-
searches. 1t may be, indeed, that we
shall really find on them the antedilu-
Wan records of which I have spoken.
After have been out there again 1
shall be happy to give you further in
formation as to this interesting discov-
cry on my return. hope to be going
out in another month, and then, l trust,
I shall be able to make still further adj
vances on what we have already dis
covered"