It needed a man of resource to beat the wiles of the Turks. Layard was certainly resourceful, and anything more amusing than the way he set out to hunt wild boar with picks and shovels would be difficult to imagine. The raft was pushed out into the stream, and for a few hours the hunters floated slowly along, landing some distance from the mound and spending the night with a party of Arabs. Early next morning Layard set off with six Arabs for the mound, and began collecting the fragments of brick he saw lying about. The collecting of these trifles was soon discarded for a more important task which centred round a piece of alabaster sticking out of the soil. The Arabs tugged at it, Layard tried to drag it out, and as it remained immovable, he set his men to dig it up. In a few hours, many plain slabs of alabaster were laid bare, and Layard knew he was on the track of the lost civilization of Assyria. He possessed a peculiar genius for the task he had undertaken, while his insight in selecting spots for his operations was almost uncanny. Where Botta dug and found nothing, Layard dug later and laid bare the most remarkable sculptures. As he looked at the hills of desolation, he imagined the palaces as they must have been in their glory, and reasoned where the walls must have stood. Sometimes he was wrong, but more often he was right. The Governor of Mosul, thinking the Englishman was digging for gold and silver treasure, tried to stop his work. Sinister rumours spread through the bazaars that the stranger was interfering with the graves of their forefathers, and trying to release all the evil spirits that were chained up in the mounds. The temper of the population grew very ugly. Superstition was everywhere rife. Layard told the Pasha the truth, and that gentleman, sympathizing with him to his face, put all sorts of obstacles in his way behind his back. The worst of the matter was that Layard had no permission to dig. Until he obtained authority he knew he would meet with opposition from the local officials. So he sent an urgent letter to Sir Stratford Canning, urging the Ambassador to obtain an order that would smooth away the opposition of the people in power in Mosul. Luckily the Ambassador eventually succeeded in getting an order from the Porte, giving permission to excavate and to ship any sculptures discovered. To that order, and to Layard’s own indomitable will, we owe our wonderful gallery of Assyrian sculptures now in the British Museum. The sullen murmurs of the mob reached Layard’s ears, and he rode into Mosul. “You are disturbing their dead,” he was told. “It will be wiser for you to stop before they get out of hand.” Crossing the rickety bridge of boats, Layard rode along the bank back to Nimroud. With him were some irregular soldiers, to see that he did not dig any more. He dared not deliberately run counter to the wishes of the Pasha, and was not anxious to risk an outbreak of the mob.