Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

DURING 19 CENTURY.- ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 361
initiate his assistants properly into their various duties,
and then to leave them in charge of the field, and to return
for a vacation to America, until the time should have
come for his resumption of the work in company with the
two Englishmen and such other assistants as the committee
might deem necessary to send out with him.
In consequence
of quarantine and other delays, the two substitutes unfortunately
did not arrive at NufFar before February, 1896, about
the same time when he whom they were expected to relieve
had planned to depart from the country. Much to our
astonishment and regret, Haynes did not find it advisable
to execute the instructions of his committee, but induced
the
two young men, after they had spent a few days at the
ruins, to return with him to Europe, as he regarded it
" both unwise and emphatically unsafe to commit the
property and work to the care of any young man who has
not had a long experience in this place, and with this
self-same
about us."
defiant, covetous, treacherous, and bloody throng
In examining Haynes' three years' labors with regard to his
methods, discoveries and views on the latter, as they are laid
down in his weekly reports to the committee and illustrated
by numerous photographs and Meyer's drawings, we must
not forget that, like Peters, he was no expert in architecture,
Assyriology, or archaeology, and, therefore, could furnish
only raw material for the use of the specialist. He will always
deserve great credit for having demonstrated for the first time,
by his own example, that it is possible to excavate a Babylonian
ruin even during the hottest part of the year without
any serious danger to the life of the explorer. With an interruption
of but two months, and most of the time alone, he
spent three consecutive years " near the insect-breeding and
pestiferous k Afej swamps, where the temperature in perfect
shade rises to
the enormous height of iao° Fahrenheit,
and the stifling sand-storms from the desert often parch the