The passing of the years has not diminished the wonder. All the time Layard carried his life in his hand. He took risks no native of the country would face. Once he was hunting a wolf, when his horse slipped and threw him right on top of the animal he was hunting. Layard picked himself up, by which time the startled wolf had made off. Often he rode boldly into the tents of unfriendly Arabs, and came out unharmed. With his imperious words he brought insolent chiefs to heel, made them feel the strength of his personality, and sometimes the strength of his arm. He lived a strenuous life, slaving on far into the dreadful heat of summer, erecting a bower of branches beside the river to sleep in. The ruins were infested with scorpions, yet he escaped their sting. He was not so lucky with the mosquitoes. Nothing alive could escape these winged pests. He had attack after attack of malaria. Often he was so stricken with fever that he found it impossible to work at all. In spite of all these drawbacks and difficulties, he triumphed. Once when he was investigating the ruins of Babylon, a Turkish governor presented him with an unruly lion! Another time he was travelling over the desert under the escort of an Arab chief, when a thief stole two of his horses. Taking the blame on himself, the chief vowed solemnly to recover the animals, no matter how long it took, even if it meant going to the ends of the earth. Layard parted from the chief at the end of his journey, and gave no further thought to the incident. For six weeks the chief relentlessly tracked the stolen horses from place to place, and one day he quietly rode into Layard’s encampment and left the two horses for their owner. Without waiting for thanks, he rode swiftly away. Extraordinary results were achieved by Layard with the little money at his command. Certainly his scale of wages would not now be considered very extravagant. He paid his diggers sixpence a day; those who filled the baskets fourpence a day, the labourers threepence, and the boys twopence. It seems little enough, but the tent-dwellers had no rent, rates or taxes to pay, and in those days they could buy 240 lb. of corn for two shillings. To many of them, living on the border line of starvation, a settled wage of two or three shillings a week meant affluence. Layard himself had a host of duties to perform, not least of which were sketching the sculptures as they were revealed and making immediate copies of all inscriptions found. Such work had to be done at once for fear the stone crumbled to pieces, for much of it only lasted a short time after being uncovered.