But even their works of utility have been no more spared by posterity than the tablets which recorded their learning, or the palaces which were the trophies of their pride. And such a work also had its source at the quarries in the Gomel valley; one of those splendid irrigating channels which used to feed the desert with the waters of life.[74] Its course can be traced for some distance alongside the banks of the river; where for yards upon yards the ample conduit is hewn through spurs of solid rock. Werda had seen further remains of it far away on the plains to the southward; "and the villagers were carrying off the stone facing of the embankments to use in building their huts." It was "only the work of infidels," and consequently fair loot for anyone. Now European engineers are labouring to re-establish what might have been so easily preserved. The "Pictures of Bavian" are at least exempt from the fate which has befallen most pictures. They are fixed for ever immovably in the position for which they were designed. They are like some forgotten "Old Master" which still hangs tarnished and ill-lit above the altar where it was dedicated; and which shows there far more nobly than when restored and exhibited in a brand-new gilded frame on a glaring gallery wall. There are far finer Assyrian sculptures in the Louvre and the British Museum than the grim, gaunt, battered sentinels that keep watch over the Gomel vale. But ranged along a Bloomsbury corridor they are obviously mere graven images; while enthroned amid the solitudes of their own eerie mountains they seem to be the very gods themselves. There are several similar bas-reliefs scattered here and there about the mountains--some fairly well preserved like those at Malthaiyah between Dohuk and Alkosh, some now almost obliterated like that by the gate of Amadia. The great king seems to have delighted in setting his seal upon any conspicuous point that was reached by his conquering armies: and to this day that instinct re-asserts itself in the behaviour of Private Atkins, who delights to carve the badge of his regiment upon any conspicuous precipice in Afghanistan. A caravan moves but slowly, but it generally wants to keep moving, and the novice who is travelling with it finds that he is allowed few lengthy halts. The old stagers always seem thinking of some point a little way ahead which they would much prefer to have behind them. Sometimes it is a bad bit of road which can only be traversed in broad daylight; sometimes a river which may suddenly be rendered unfordable by the intervention of an unforeseen spate. On this stage the unknown factor was the conduct of the Khozr river, a much more considerable stream than the Gomel, which lay some four hours further east; and whose behaviour on the present occasion was more problematical than usual because the dark clouds to the northward might imply heavy rain in the hills.