our painful quest, that Truth evades our grasp in this as in weightier matters. Persepolis was fully known and its inscriptions translated before any attempt was made to explore the site of Susa. Major Rennell was among the first to identify it with Shus, about fifteen miles S.W. of Dizful.[204] The place was visited in 1810 by Captains Kinneir and Monteith, who were attached to the mission of Sir John Malcolm.[205] The former describes the ruins as lying about seven or eight miles to the west of Dizful and not unlike those of Babylon. He describes it as consisting of a succession of mounds covered with fragments of bricks and coloured tiles extending over nearly twelve miles. Two mounds attracted special attention. The first rises to a height of a hundred feet and is about a mile in circumference. At its base is the reputed Tomb of Daniel, a building that appears comparatively modern. The other mound is not quite so high, but it is nearly two miles in circumference. They are composed of a mixture of brick and clay, with irregular layers of brick and mortar five or six feet thick to serve as a prop. Large blocks of marble covered with hieroglyphics were reported to be occasionally discovered by the Arabs.[206] One of these—the famous ‘black stone’—was seen by Captain Monteith near the Tomb of Daniel, where it had recently been rolled down from the summit of the Citadel Hill. It was not more than twenty-two inches long and twelve broad, but it had a cuneiform inscription on one side, and various sacred emblems represented upon the other. He made a sketch of it and might then have purchased it at a moderate price; but, though not large, it was found impossible at that time to remove it. Shortly afterwards two other Englishmen—the unfortunate Grant and Fotheringham—offered seventy pounds for it, but their intention to take it with them on their return was frustrated by their murder.[207] The value set upon it by the foreigners raised it in the estimation of the natives to such a height that the subsequent effort of Mr. Gordon to get possession of it utterly failed (1812).[208] It was already invested with the mysterious virtue of a talisman, and its loss, it was thought, would involve the country in disaster. To secure its retention resort was had to the singular expedient of blowing it into a hundred fragments by gunpowder. The destruction, however, was not complete, and the fragments were afterwards carefully collected, and secretly built into a pillar in the Tomb of Daniel, where they now are. In 1836 Rawlinson was able to pass two days amid the ruins in the course of his march from Zohab to Shuster. His visit, he thought, had enabled him to ‘unravel the mystery of the two rivers Eulaeus and Choaspes.’ He heard that the ‘black stone’ had been blown to pieces, but he was evidently not informed that the fragments were collected and were then in the Tomb of Daniel. He was rewarded, however, by the discovery of a broken obelisk with ‘a very