Collecting together my old excavators from the Shemutti and Jehesh (the Arab tribes who inhabit Nimroud and Naifa), and from the tents of a few Jebours who still lingered round the village to glean a scanty subsistence after the harvest, I placed workmen in different parts of the mound. The north-west palace had not been fully explored. Most of the chambers which did not contain sculptured slabs, but were simply built of sundried bricks, had been left unopened. I consequently directed a party of workmen to resume the excavations where they had been formerly abandoned. New trenches were also opened in the ruins of the centre palace, where, as yet, no sculptures had been discovered in their original position against the walls. The high conical mound forming the north-west corner of Nimroud, the pyramid as it has usually been called, had always been an object of peculiar interest, which want of means had hitherto prevented me fully examining. With the exception of a shaft, about forty feet deep, sunk nearly in the centre, and passing through a solid mass of sun-dried bricks, no other opening had been made into this singular ruin. I now ordered a tunnel to be carried into its base on the western face, and on a level with the conglomerate rock upon which it rested. As I ascended the mound next morning I perceived a group of travellers on its summit, their horses picketted in the stubble. Ere I could learn what strangers had thus wandered to this remote region, my hand was seized by the faithful Bairakdar. Beneath, in an excavated chamber, wrapped in his travelling cloak, was Rawlinson deep in sleep, wearied by a long and harassing night's ride. For the first time we met in the Assyrian ruins, and besides the greetings of old friendship there was much to be seen together, and much to be talked over. The fatigues of the journey had, however, brought on fever, and we were soon compelled, after visiting the principal excavations, to take refuge from the heat of the sun in the mud huts of the village. The attack increasing in the evening it was deemed prudent to ride into Mosul at once, and we mounted our horses in the middle of the night. During two days Col. Rawlinson was too ill to visit the excavations at Kouyunjik. On the third we rode together to the mound. After a hasty survey of the ruins we parted, and he continued his journey to Constantinople and to England, to reap the laurels of a well-earned fame.