Morning journal and courier., 1882-02-01
Finds Near Bagdad.
Ten Thousand Tablets in Enormous
 BufIdinR-Possibly AntedfIuvIan- Rec

Ten Thousand Tablets in Enormous
 BufIding-PossfbIy AntedfIuvian- Rec
 ords.
 (From the London Timesl
 On Monday evening, during a dis cussion which took place on paper read st the Victoria Institute, Mir. Rassam, the we'll known discoverer of Assyrian relics, said "In March last went out again to the East, as you know am always doing, for the pur- pose of finding out the old cities which lie buried there. AS I was journeying on one occasion in pursuit of this object met with sn Arab who told me that he knew of an old ruined city, the remains of which were to be found within five hours of Bagdad-that is to say, taking the computation Of three miles an hour. the place he knew of was fifteen miles from Bagdad. As we were travelling along the route pointed out by the Arab, we came at distance of four hours journeying upon an old ruin that I had never seen be- fore-a ruin of great magnitude-so large indeed, that it must be about three miles in circumference. I at first thought that this was the place of which my guide had spoken. We went onward, and at last the Arab showed me 8 most wonderful ruin l set to work and excavated there but found nothing of any antiquarian value.
 q afterward went back to the place had first seen, and commenced a thorough search there. The result was that after digging for four days we came upon the top of some walls This induced us to perseyere with in creased ardor, and we soon found that we had come upon an enormous building, in which we began to find inscriptions I may here say that I am not an Assyrian reader. I am only a discoyerer of Assyrian relics, which I send to the British Museum, where those who have made Assyriology a study in terpret the inscriptions find. We frat of all discovered four rooms. and then came Ef&I rf.F Tafss a11 generally of the Assyrian or Babylonikn order, and paved with bricks or stones but tho fifth was paved with asphalt, the discovery of which brought to my mind Solomon's saying There is noth- ing new under the sun Previous to this I had always thought that asphalt was modern invention. Singular as this discove- " was, we dug through the asphalt, and in a short time we were rewarded by coming upon a coffer on which we found inscrip- tions From this eoffer ve took two eylin- ders These were covered with inscriptions which are supposed to be the most important records of the oldest city in the world, founded, as historians tell us, by Noah after the deluRe, and where, according to trAdi- ton, Noah buried the antediluvian records. We'll, I had to come home but I left some 1 workmen continuing 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 a channel, ! and inside that channel there were records | inscribed on nearly ten thousand tablets. | These tablets are all coming to England but i we cannot, of course, as yet say what they | contain. They may contain something of even greater value than anything that has i hitherto been discovered in the course of our | eastern researches But 1t may be, indeed, | that we shall really find on them the antedi- luvian records of which I have spoken Af- ter I have been out there again I shall be
 happy to give you further information ss to
 this interesting discovery on my return. 1
 hope to be going out in another month, and
 then, I trust, I shall be able to make still fur
 ther advances on what we have already dis | covered n