It Is Well Supplied With Provisions, Which Are Brought From Armenia Down The River Tigris, Upon Rafts Made Of Goat Skin Bags Blown Full Of Wind, Over Which Boards Are Laid, On Which The Goods Are Loaded.

When these are discharged, the skin bags are opened and emptied of air, and are then carried back to Armenia on camels to serve again.

Bagdat belonged formerly to Persia, but is now subject to the Turks. Over against Bagdat, on the other side of the Tigris, is a very fair village, to which there is a passage across from Bagdat by a long bridge of boats, connected by a vast iron chain made fast at each side of the river. When any boats have to pass up or down the river, a passage is made for them by removing some of the boats of this bridge.

The Tower of Babel is on this side of the Tigris towards Arabia, about seven or eight miles from Bagdat, being now ruined on all sides, and with the ruins thereof hath made a little mountain, so that no shape or form of a tower remains. It was built of bricks dried in the sun, having canes and leaves of the palm-tree laid between the courses of bricks. It stands in a great plain between the Tigris and Euphrates, and no entrance can be any where seen for going into it.

Near the river Euphrates, two days journey from Bagdat, in a field near a place called _Ait_, there is a hole in the ground which continually throws out boiling pitch accompanied by a filthy smoke, the pitch flowing into a great field which is always full of it.

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