9. Fortunately it would not require much labor to restore the wooden frames to their proper place and reconstruct the reed-plaited, mud-plastered walls as well as the roof composed of reeds and boughs--such being the sumptuous residences of which Layard shared the largest with various domestic animals, from whose immediate companionship he was saved by a thin partition, the other hovels being devoted to the wives, children and poultry of his host, to his own servants and different household uses. But the time came when not even this accommodation, poor as it was, could be enjoyed with any degree of comfort. When the summer heat set in in earnest, the huts became uninhabitable from their closeness and the vermin with which they swarmed, while a canvas tent, though far preferable in the way of airiness and cleanliness, did not afford sufficient shelter. 10. "In this dilemma," says Layard, "I ordered a recess to be cut into the bank of the river where it rose perpendicularly from the water's edge. By screening the front with reeds and boughs of trees, and covering the whole with similar materials, a small room was formed. I was much troubled, however, with scorpions and other reptiles, which issued from the earth forming the walls of my apartment; and later in the summer by the gnats and sandflies which hovered on a calm night over the river." It is difficult to decide between the respective merits of this novel summer retreat and of the winter dwelling, ambitiously constructed of mud bricks dried in the sun, and roofed with solid wooden beams. This imposing residence, in which Layard spent the last months of his first winter in Assyria, would have been sufficient protection against wind and weather, after it had been duly coated with mud. Unfortunately a heavy shower fell before it was quite completed, and so saturated the bricks that they did not dry again before the following spring. "The consequence was," he pleasantly remarks, "that the only verdure on which my eyes were permitted to feast before my return to Europe, was furnished by my own property--the walls in the interior of the rooms being continually clothed with a crop of grass." [Illustration: 3.--VIEW OF EUPHRATES NEAR THE RUINS OF BABYLON. (Babelon.)]