Sometimes they are almost continuous for miles; and if we take the Kasr mound as a centre, and mark about it an area extending five miles in each direction (which would give a city of the size described by Ctesias and the historians of Alexander), we shall scarcely find a single square mile of the hundred without some indications of ancient buildings upon its surface.

The case is not like that of Nineveh, where outside the walls the country is for a considerable distance singularly bare of ruins.

The mass of Babylonian remains extending from Babil to Amran does not correspond to the whole _enceinte_ of Nineveh, but to the mound of Koyunjik.

It has every appearance of being, not the city, but "the heart of the city"-- the "Royal quarter" outside of which were the streets and squares, and still further off, the vanished walls.

It may seem strange that the southern capital should have so greatly exceeded the dimensions of the northern one.