impressing itself upon one, consciously or subconsciously. Everywhere were
ruins; occasionally a wall still reared itself clear of the all-enveloping
dust, but generally all that remained were great mounds, where the desert
had crept in and claimed its own, covering palace, house, and market,
temple, synagogue, mosque, or church with its everlasting mantle. Often
the streets could still be traced, but oftener not. The weight of ages was
ever present as one rode among the ruins of these once busy, prosperous
cities, now long dead and buried, how long no one knew, for frequently
their very names were forgotten. Babylon, Ur of the Chaldees, Istabulat,
Nineveh, and many more great cities of history are now nothing but names
given to desert mounds.

Close by Samarra stands a strange corkscrew tower, known by the natives as
the Malwiyah. It is about a hundred and sixty feet high, built of brick,
with a path of varying width winding up around the outside. No one knew
its purpose, and estimates of its antiquity varied by several thousand
years. One fairly well-substantiated story told that it had been the
custom to kill prisoners by hurling them off its top. We found it
exceedingly useful as an observation-post. In the same manner we used
Julian's tomb, a great mound rising up in the desert some five or six
miles up-stream of the town. The legend is that when the Roman Emperor
died of his wounds his soldiers, impressing the natives, built this as a
mausoleum; but there is no ground whatever for this belief, for it would
have been physically impossible for a harassed or retreating army to have
performed a task of such magnitude. The natives call it "The Granary," and
claim that that was its original use. Before the war the Germans had
started in excavating, and discovered shafts leading deep down, and on top
the foundations of a palace. Around its foot may be traced roadways and
circular plots, and especially when seen from an aeroplane it looks as if
there had at one time been an elaborate system of gardens.