They proved to be the ruins of a king’s palace, but unfortunately as soon as they were laid bare the slabs began to crumble. A huge fire had destroyed the palace. In the heat the slabs were reduced to lime, and directly they were uncovered they fell in little pieces. Nothing could be done to preserve them. They had remained hidden for thousands of years. The kindly earth had kept them intact, but directly the air played about them they decayed. Layard was for long in close touch with Botta. More than once the Frenchman wrote to Layard about his non-success, and Layard displayed his fine character by urging the Frenchman to continue. The Briton had studied the spot with a view to working there. All thoughts of reaching Ceylon had passed from his mind. He wrote to friends, and tried to interest them in his proposed work. He received no encouragement. Despite all this disappointment, he was great enough to encourage his rival. It throws considerable light on the character of the man who eventually accomplished so much on the banks of the Tigris. If Layard did not make the first discovery there, he had much to do with it. But for his encouragement, Botta might have ceased digging long before the peasant stood looking down into his trenches, to tell him that there were heaps of the funny old bricks in his village of Khorsabad. The influence of the Englishman, and the laughing words of a peasant, led to the Frenchman taking the first step back into the Assyria of the past. CHAPTER XI Layard, disappointed that his own countrymen were so little interested in his proposals, was impelled by the success of Botta to make a strong effort to begin the work he was longing to do. Hastening to Constantinople, he saw Sir Stratford Canning, the British Ambassador, told him his plans, and succeeded in interesting him to such an extent that the Ambassador advanced the amount of £60. It was a trivial sum with which to start excavating the mounds of the Tigris, and not many men would have undertaken the work with so little money behind them. Layard did not hesitate for a moment. He left Constantinople without breathing a word about his intentions, and in less than a fortnight was back in Mosul. The country, through misrule, was very unsettled, and the authorities were so antagonistic that Layard dared not tell them of his project. He knew that if he let fall the slightest word as to what he was about, he would immediately be stopped. Keeping his plans to himself, he collected one or two men and announced that he was going on an expedition to shoot wild boars. A raft was built, the goatskins were blown up to support it, and Layard made a brave show of the guns and spears he put aboard. The other hunting weapons were so strange that he thought it prudent to smuggle them on to the raft. They were, in fact, picks and shovels!