17. Mr. Botta had by this time fallen into a rather hopeless mood; yet he did not dare to neglect the hint, and sent a few men to the mound which had been pointed out to him, and which, as well as the village on the top of it, bore the name of KHORSABAD. His agent began operations from the top. A well was sunk into the mound, and very soon brought the workmen to the top of a wall, which, on further digging, was found to be lined along its base with sculptured slabs of some soft substance much like gypsum or limestone. This discovery quickly brought Mr. Botta to the spot, in a fever of excitement. He now took the direction of the works himself, had a trench dug from the outside straight into the mound, wide and deep, towards the place already laid open from above. What was his astonishment on finding that he had entered a hall entirely lined all round, except where interruptions indicated the place of doorways leading into other rooms, with sculptured slabs similar to the one first discovered, and representing scenes of battles, sieges and the like. He walked as in a dream. It was a new and wonderful world suddenly opened. For these sculptures evidently recorded the deeds of the builder, some powerful conqueror and king. And those long and close lines engraved in the stone, all along the slabs, in the same peculiar character as the short inscriptions on the bricks that lay scattered on the plain--they must surely contain the text to these sculptured illustrations. But who is to read them? They are not like any known writing in the world and may remain a sealed book forever. Who, then, was the builder? To what age belong these structures? Which of the wars we read about are here portrayed? None of these questions, which must have strangely agitated him, could Mr. Botta have answered at the time. But not the less to him remains the glory of having, first of living men, entered the palace of an Assyrian king. 18. Mr. Botta henceforth devoted himself exclusively to the mound of Khorsabad. His discovery created an immense sensation in Europe. Scholarly indifference was not proof against so unlooked-for a shock; the revulsion was complete and the spirit of research and enterprise was effectually aroused, not to slumber again. The French consul was supplied by his government with ample means to carry on excavations on a large scale. If the first success may be considered as merely a great piece of good fortune, the following ones were certainly due to intelligent, untiring labor and ingenuous scholarship. We see the results in Botta's voluminous work "Monuments de Ninive"[B] and in the fine Assyrian collection of the Louvre, in the first room of which is placed, as is but just, the portrait of the man to whose efforts and devotion it is due.