The captives, bearing skins probably containing water and flour to nourish them during a long and harassing march, were fettered in pairs, and urged onwards by their guards. The women were partly on foot, and partly with their children on mules and in carts drawn by oxen. Mothers were represented holding the water-skins for their young ones to quench their thirst, whilst in some instances fathers had placed their weary children on their shoulders, for they were marching during the heat of a Mesopotamian summer, as the sculptor had shown by introducing large clusters of dates on the palms. Thus were driven the inhabitants of Samaria through the Desert to Halah and Habor, by the river of Gozan and the cities of the Medes,[180] and we may see in these bas-reliefs a picture of the hardships and sufferings to which the captive people of Israel were exposed when their cities fell into the hands of the Assyrian king, and their inhabitants were sent to colonise the distant provinces of his empire. On the south side of the hall, parts of four slabs only had been preserved; the sculpture upon the others had been so completely destroyed, that even the subject could no longer be ascertained. The fragments still remaining, graphically depicted the passage of the river by the great king. The bas-reliefs represented very accurately a scene that may be daily witnessed, without the royal warrior, on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. Not a fragment of inscription remained to identify the country represented in the bas-reliefs I have just described. From the size of the river, far exceeding that of any other seen in the sculptures of Kouyunjik, I am inclined to believe that it must have been the combined waters of the Euphrates and Tigris, now known as the Shat-el-Arab. In the south side of the hall a centre portal flanked by winged bulls, and two small entrances, formed by gigantic figures, opened into a long chamber, whose sculptured walls had been burnt to lime. To judge from the fragments that remained of this series of sculptures, the most skilful artist of the day must have been employed in its execution. At both ends of the chamber, doors, guarded by colossal figures, led into smaller apartments, in which the bas-reliefs had been almost entirely destroyed. Returning to the great hall we found an entrance formed by colossal figures leading into a long narrow chamber, about 70 feet by 12, whose walls had partly escaped the general wreck. It appeared to be the remains of an entrance into the palace, like that on the western face, or a gallery leading to the outer terrace, which probably surrounded the building. On its alabaster panels were sculptured the conquest of some of those tribes which inhabited, from the remotest period, the vast marshes formed by the Euphrates and Tigris in Chaldæa Babylonia.