pile of brick 37 ft. high by 28 in breadth, diminishing in thickness to the top, which is broken and irregular, and rent by a large fissure extending through a third of its height. It is perforated by small square holes, disposed in rhomboids. The fire-burnt bricks of which it is built have inscriptions on them, and so excellent is the cement, which appears to be lime-mortar, that it is nearly impossible to extract a brick whole. The other parts of the summit of this hill are occupied by immense fragments of brickwork, of no determinate figure, tumbled together, and converted into solid vitrified masses, as if they had undergone the action of the fiercest fire, or had been blown up with gunpowder, the layers of brick being perfectly discernible. These ruins stand on a prodigious mound, the whole of which is itself in ruins, channeled by the weather, and strewed with fragments of black stone, sandstone, and marble. Sir R. K. Porter has shown that the intense vitrifying heat to which the summit has been evidently subjected, must have been the result of fire operating from above, and was probably produced by lightning. This is a curious circumstance, taken in connection with the ancient tradition that the tower of B. was rent and overthrown by fire from heaven. Porter thinks that the works of the Babylonish kings, especially the stupendous temple of Belus, which was erected on the site of the old tower, concealed for a while the marks of the original devastation; and that now the destructions of time and of man have reduced it to nearly the same condition in which it appeared after the confusion. Mr. George Smith discovered the legend of the building of B. among the Assyrian tablets in the British museum, and gave, an account of it in his Chaldean Account of Genesis (1875).

BAB-EL-MAN'DEB (i.e. "the Gate of Tears") is the name of the strait between Arabia and the continent of Africa, by which the Red sea is connected with the gulf of Aden and the Indian ocean, so called from the danger arising to small vessels from strong currents. The Arabian peninsula here throws out a cape, bearing the same name as the strait, rising to the height of 865 ft. About 20 m. distant from this cape stands the walllike coast of Africa, rising in Ras Sejan to the height of 380 ft. Within the straits, but nearer to Arabia, lies the bare rocky island of Perim (q.v.), now occupied by the English as a fort; the strait on the e. side of this island is called the little strait, and that on the w. the great strait. The depth of the former varies from 8 to 12 fathoms; that of the latter reaches 185 fathoms. The first is usually chosen by vessels on account of its affording good anchorage. Close to the African coast lie eight small islands, called the Eight Brothers.

BA'BER, or BA'BUR (Zohir-Eddin Mohammed), the first of the Great Moguls in India, a descendant of Timur, was b. in 1483. He was barely 12 years of age when he succeeded his father, Omar Sheikh Mirza, in the sovereignty of the countries lying between Samarcand and the Indus. With a view to the conquest of India, although constantly contending with revolts in his own dominions, he made himself master, by fraud and force, of the provinces of Kashgar, Kundez, Kandahar, and Cabul. Having thus opened the way to India, he made two or three rapid incursions into Hindustan; and finally taking advantage of the feeble government of Ibrahim Lodi, about the end of 1525, he crossed the Attock (the Cabul branch of the Indus), quickly defeated some bodies of troops that opposed him in the Punjab; and at last, in April, 1526, on the plain of Panipat, not far from Delhi, encountered and fought a decisive battle with his enemy, whose army was far superior in numbers. The 100,000 men and 1000 elephants of sultan Ibrahim were dispersed; Ibrahim himself fled; and B. made his entry into Delhi. In the following month, Agra, the second city of the empire, surrendered. B.'s enjoyment of empire in India was short; he died in 1530, having had to contend during the five years of his reign with numerous conspiracies and revolts. To the talents of a general and statesman, which he manifested in his conquests, his improvements of public roads, measuring of lands, adjustment of taxation, postal arrangements, etc., B. united a taste for science and art. He wrote, in the Tartar language, the history of his own life and conquests, which was translated into Persian by Abdul Rachim, and, more recently, from the Persian into English. B. was succeeded on the throne of Delhi by the eldest of his four sons, Humayun, and was the founder of the B. or Great Mogul dynasty.

BABEUF, FRANÇOIS NOEL, generally known by the name of "Caius Gracchus," which he affixed to his political articles, was b. in 1764 at St. Quentin, in the department of Aisne, France. On the breaking out of the revolution in 1789, he became a fanatical advocate of the popular demands. During the reign of terror he took up a position of hostility to Robespierre and the terrorists. In his journal, established at Paris, in July, 1794, and termed The Tribune of the People, he preached the sovereignty of the masses, and defended the absurdest consequences flowing from that political doctrine. He was in favor of a new distribution of the land, of the abolition of every political order, and the equality of all individuals, wise and foolish. His violent language caused him to be imprisoned. On his release, he attached himself to the members of the extreme Jacobin party, which had just been overthrown. A secret conspiracy was formed, the aim of which was the destruction of the directory, and the complete re-establishment of the democratic constitution of 1793, which had been suspended during the reign of terror. The plot was discovered through the treachery of one of the members. B. and other chiefs were seized, imprisoned, and ultimately brought to trial. B. defended himself with the courage of a fanatic, and overwhelmed his judges with abuse. He was of

Baboo.

course condemned to death, and was guillotined on the following day, May 24, 1797. B. was a weak-headed enthusiast, without talent or culture; but abler men in the conspiracy made use of his furiously resolute character to secure the ends they had in view.

BABINGTON, ANTONY, an English gentleman of the county of Derby, head of a conspiracy in favor of Mary Stuart of Scotland. The rivalry between queen Mary and queen Elizabeth of England was at the same time a contest between Catholicism and Protestantism. Accordingly, the various plots for rescuing Mary from the power of her enemy were of the same character, and have been misrepresented and judged of according to the ecclesiastical prejudices of each historian, B., young, rich, a zealous Catholic, and on that account already an enthusiastic admirer of the unfortunate Mary, was induced, through the agents of a determined conspirator, Morgan, who had been arrested in France at the instance of the English court, to put himself at the head of a plot that had for its object the murder of queen Elizabeth, and the rescue of Mary. The execu tion of the murder was undertaken by one Savage, in which he was to be assisted by a number of the Catholic nobility, as circumstances might require. The day of action was fixed for the 24th of Aug., 1586. B. reserved the deliverance of Mary for his own share, entered into correspondence with her, and received letters purporting to be from her in return, approving of the assassination of Elizabeth. The secretary, Walsingham, not only had all the threads of the plot in his hand, but contributed, through his emissaries, to spur on the conspirators to the execution of their plans. When the right moment was come, B. and his accomplices were arrested, and condemned. B. made no denial, acknowledged the letters to Mary to be his, and, Sep.,20, 1586, laid his head on the block. Savage, Barnwell, Bollard, Abington, Tichburne, and Tilnec, had a like fate. Mary Stuart herself had, four months later, to ascend the bloody scaffold; and her condemnation was justified chiefly on the ground of those letters received by Babington. Mary, however, denied to the last moment that the letters were written by her hand, or with her knowledge; and her friends constantly maintained that they were the work of Walsingham himself, in order that the unhappy queen might be got rid of with a show of justice. The rest of Walsingham's conduct in this affair, as well as the way in which he was in the habit of supporting Elizabeth's views in general, give at least a high degree of probability to the accusation.

BABINGTON, CHURCHILL, b. England, 1821; professor of archæology; has written on botany, ornithology, numismatics, archæology, etc., and edited the orations of Hyperides from recently discovered manuscripts.

Ön

BABISM (from BÂBI, or BÂBY); the appellation of a sect in Persia, founded by Seyd Mohammed Ali, b. about 1824, who assumed the name of "Bâb," i.e. "the gate." returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1843, Seyd appeared in his native city (Shiraz) with a new commentary on the Koran, and soon became engaged in controversy with the regular priests, who, exasperated by his free criticism of their conduct, obtained an order forbidding him to teach in public and confining him to his house. Here he taught privately, increasing his pretensions, and declared that he was Nokteh, "the point;" not merely the recipient of a new divine revelation, but the focus in which all preceding dispensations would converge. He gained proselytes rapidly, among them a woman-a wonderful circumstance in any country of the east-known as Gourred-Oul-Ayn (" Consolation of the Eyes,") because of her surpassing loveliness. The new religion made rapid progress, and the efforts of the authorities to suppress it produced civil war. Hussier, one of Seyd's disciples, was taken, after defeating several expeditions sent against him, and put to death in 1849; and the next year Balfouroushi, another leader, was slain in battle. The Bâb himself was imprisoned and executed, but his death did not discourage his followers. They recognized Mirza Yahya, a youth of noble descent, as his successor, who established himself in Bagdad, where he is now, or was not long ago, living. An attempt in 1852 of some zealous Bâbis to assassinate the Shah led to a terrible persecution, in which the beautiful “Consolation of the Eyes" perished. The Bab doctrines are essentially a system of pantheism, with additions from gnostic and All individual existence is regarded as emanating from the superior deity, by whom it will ultimately be reabsorbed. Great importance is attached to the number 7, as indicating the attributes supposed to be displayed in the act of creation; and to the number 19, which mystically expresses the name of the Deity himself, and is, moreover, the sum of the prophets among whom the latest incarnation of the divine nature is conceived to be distributed in the present dispensation. The sacred college cannot become extinct until the final judgment, the death of any of its members being immediately followed by a re-incarnation, as in the case of the grand lama. Moses, Christ, and Mohammed are considered to be prophets, but merely precursors of the Bâb. The morals of the sect are good; polygamy and concubinage are forbidden; the veiling of woman's face is omitted, and the equality of the sex is so far recognized that at least one of the 19 prophets must always be a female. Asceticism is discountenanced, mendicancy prohibited, and hospitality, charity, generous living, and abstinence from intoxi cating liquors and drugs, are taught and practiced.

other sources.

BA BOO, a title of respect equal to "Mr." in English, given in India to educated and wealthy natives noted for liberal views, public spirit, and generosity.

Babylon.

BABOON, Cynocephalus, a genus of the monkey family, or simiada (see MONKEY), and distinguished from all the rest of that family by the very elongated muzzle, which ter minates abruptly, and is pierced with nostrils at the end like that of a dog. The face has, indeed, a general resemblance to the face of a dog. The dentition agrees with that of the other apes or monkeys of the old world, to which the baboons are entirely confined, being only distinguished by the remarkable strength of the canine teeth. Baboons, like almost all the monkey family in the old world, have callosities upon the buttocks; and, like the greater part of them, they have cheek-pouches. The tail of some of the species is of considerable length, that of others is a mere tubercle, with an erect tuft of hairs. The physiognomy of all baboons is repulsive, and indicates the fierceness which strongly characterizes them, and in which they differ from monkeys in general; some of the larger ones are dreaded by the inhabitants of the country in which they are found; the danger to be apprehended from them being increased by the numbers in which they usually herd together. Their fore and hind legs are so proportioned, that they walk easily, and run swiftly on the ground; but, like all other quadrumanous animals, they climb trees and rocks with great agility. Their hair is long, forming a sort of mane on the upper parts. All of them are very susceptible of cold, and they seldom live long when removed from their native tropical countries. They feed chiefly on fruits and roots: some of them inhabit barren and stony places where scorpions abound, which they seize, adroitly deprive of the sting, and devour. They are very cunning, mischievous, and revengeful; troops of them sometimes enter a plantation, not merely to plunder, but apparently to amuse themselves by destroying whatever they can find; they seem, however, always to have some appointed to keep watch, and they make off with great rapidity on the first signal of alarm. When plundering, they cram their cheek-pouches before they begin to eat. These check-pouches are very capacious: a B., kept in confinement, has been seen to put eight eggs into them at once, and then to take out the eggs one by one, to break them at the end, and deliberately to suck their contents. The larger baboons are sometimes hunted by dogs where they have not trees to take refuge in; but a single dog, however powerful, cannot safely attack them; a B. will seize a dog by the hind legs, and whirl him round and round till he is stupefied. Baboops are not so easily domesticated as many kinds of monkey; however, they are not quite incapable of it when taken young. “Happy Jerry," a mandrill or rib-nose B., which was long a great object of attraction at Exeter Change, used to sit with great gravity in an arm-chair, awaiting orders, which he obeyed with slowness and composure. He smoked tobacco, but did not seem much to relish it, and was rather induced to do it by a bribe of gin and water.

As examples of baboons with tails of considerable length, may be mentioned the chacma, or pig faced B., also called the ursine B. (C. porcarius), a native of s. Africa; and the dog-faced B. (C. hamadryas), a native of Arabia, Persia, and the mountains of Abys sinia. The latter species, perhaps the only one known to the ancients, is often sculptured on the ancient monuments of Egypt, and it is supposed to have been the species of monkey to which divine honors were paid. Its body was frequently embalmed, and B. mummies are still found.--The chacma is one of the largest of the baboons, about the size of an English mastiff, and very much stronger; it is common on the mountains of Cape Colony, and in troops would be very formidable, but that they usually scamper out of the way, instead of attacking travelers, unless they are provoked It is of a dark-brown color, with long shaggy hair. The tail is rather more than half the length of the body, and is terminated by a tuft of long black hair.

The short-tailed, or almost tailless baboons, far exceed their longer-tailed congeners in ugliness. Only two species are certainly known-the mandrill or rib-nose B. (Ŭ mormon), and the drill (C. leucophæus), both natives of Guinea. The mandrill is the largest, fiercest, and most powerful of the whole genus. The colors of its fur are very fine, of a light olive brown above, and silvery gray beneath; but besides other things unpleasant to the sight, its face is peculiarly hideous; the cheek-bones in the adult males being enormously swollen, so that the cheeks are protuberant to the size of a man's fist upon each side, and ribbed with blue, scarlet, and purple. In their native forests, mandrills generally live in large troops, and are said to put to flight every other wild beast. See illus., MONKEYS, ETC., vol. X., p. 138, fig. 9.

BA'BRIUS, a Greek fabulist, who lived about the close of the Alexandrian age, or the beginning of the succeeding Roman-sophistic period, made a considerable collection of sopian fables (see ESOP), which he turned into verse, in a natural and popular style. Several versions and transformations of these were made during the middle ages, and have come down to us under the name of Esop's Fables. Bentley, who, in his Dissertatio de Babrio was the first to recognize in these fables of Esop the original work of B., endeavored to restore portions of the verses, and pointed out other fragment of the genuine B. in other quarters. A few fables were added from manuscripts by Furia, Korais, and Schneider, and all that was known at the time was collected by Knoche (Halle, 1835). At last, in 1842, a Greek of the name of Minoides Minas, employed by the French government to explore the convents of the east, discovered a manuscript with 123 hitherto unknown fables of B., a copy of which he made and brought to Paris, and published in 1844. See Lachmann's edition (Berl. 1845), and Rutherford's B. (1883).

BABUYA'NES ISLANDS, in the Pacific between mosa; Calayan and Babuyan are the most important. large quantity of sulphur. Batan is the largest town.

Babylon.

the Loo Choo islands and ForThey are fertile, and furnish a Pop. of the islands est. 8,000.

BABYLON-BABYLONIA. Babylonia was the name given in ancient times to the flat country about the lower course of the Euphrates, called in modern times Irak-Arabi. In the Old Testament, it is call Shinar, Babel, and also "land of the Chaldees;" and by the later Greek and Roman writers, occasionally Chaldea. Its proper boundaries were: on the n., towards Mesopotamia, the Euphrates and the Median Wall, which extended from the junction of the Chabur with the Euphrates to the Tigris; on the e., towards Assyria and Susiana, the Tigris; on the s., the gulf of Persia; and on the w., the desert of Arabia. During the wider extension of the Babylonian dominion, the name comprehended also Assyria and Mesopotamia. The country forms a perfect plain, which is a continuation of that of Assyria. The two rivers, Euphrates and Tigris, here approach each other most nearly, until their blended waters fall into the Persian gulf. The country was once protected from flooding by numerous canals and embankments, and several artificial lakes, which are now mostly in ruin. The most important canal was that now known as Nahr-el-Melik, which is undoubtedly the ancient royal canal that joined the two great rivers. It was kept in repair by the Roman emperors, and was serv. iceable as late as the 7th century. The soil, naturally fertile, was rendered more so by the garden-like way in which it was cultivated, and yielded abundant crops, especially of wheat, barley, and dates. The want of stone and wood was more severely felt than in Assyria. The only building material was brick, for which the soil afforded abundance of clay. The bricks were either dried in the sun or burnt, and were very durable, resisting, in the ruins, the effects of the weather to this day. Mineral bitumen, springing up everywhere in abundance, served as mortar. In this favored plain, the human race attained early a state of social and political organization, the oldest, indeed, that antiquity gives us any account of.

Until recently, the early history of Babylonia was doubtful and dark. The only sources were a few incidental notices in the Bible; some fragments derived at third hand from the perished writings of Berosus, a Babylonian priest, who had translated the annals of his country into Greek; and lastly, the notices of Greek writers, chiefly Herodotus. But the whole is confused and contradictory, and history and mythology were jumbled together.

But light is now breaking in upon the darkness. In recent years, multitudes of brick tablets, stamped with cuneiform (see CUNEIFORM) characters, have been dug up from the ruins of the great cities that once studded the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates; and in these we find ourselves in possession of contemporaneous records of events reaching back 30 c. before the Christian era, and restoring a page of human history that was apparently lost.

At the earliest period to which the records carry us back, the population of the whole valley of the Tigris and Euphrates consisted mainly of tribes of Turanian origin, their language having remarkable affinities with those of the Ural-Altaic group of the Turanian nations, e.g. the Finns, the Magyars, and Turks. Closely allied tribes occu pied the whole region s. w. of the Caspian sea-Media, Armenia, Elam, Susiana. In that region lies Ararat, the "Mountain of the World," and to that region the traditions of those Turanians pointed as the cradle of their race. But the earliest records reveal the existence of a Semitic element in the population of the Euphrates valley, coming in apparently from the s.w.-Arabia and Egypt. The infiltration of this foreign element went on increasing for centuries, until at last it got the upper hand, and the Babylo nians and Assyrians, when they became known to the historians of the west, were essen. tially Semitic peoples. Their civilization, however, was merely a development of what they took up from the original inhabitants.

The dominant people in Babylonia in the earliest times were the Accad, or Acca dians. They had come originally from the mountains of Elam, to the e. of the Tigris, and hence their name Accad, which means "highlanders." They brought with them the art of cuneiform writing, as well as other arts and sciences, especially astro nomy. It is in the Turanian language of these Accadians that the cuneiform inscrip tions of Babylonia are written for many centuries. And when the Semitic tongue had become predominant, Accadian, now a dead language, was to the Assyrians what Latin has been to the nations of modern Europe: Assyrian scholars translated the Accadian literature into their own language, and their technical and sacred terms were borrowed from it. Every day is bringing to light new proofs of the influence of these Accadians upon the civilization of the Semitic nations, and through them upon that of Europe. Greece, it is well known, derived its system of weights and measures from the Babylonian standards; but these have been proved to be of Accadian origin. The Greek mina or mna, the fundamental unit of the Greek monetary system, is the maneh of Carchemish, and manch is found to be not a Semitic but an Accadian word, showing the origin of the system. The sexagesimal division of the circle; the signs of the zodiac; a week of seven days, named as we now name them, and the seventh a day of rest, are all Accadian. Every large city had its public library. In the royal library of a Babylonian monarch, Sargon (about 2000 B.C.), every tablet was numbered, so that the reader had only to write

down the number of the tablet he wanted, and it was handed to him by the librarian. Among the multifarious subjects of this extensive literature there are hymns to the gods strikingly like the Hebrew psalms; and in a long mythological poem there is an episode giving an account of the deluge almost identical with that of Genesis, only more detailed. See ASSYRIA. The Accad religion was originally a Shamanism (q.v.), similar to what still prevails among the Turanian tribes of Siberia; but it gradually developed into a huge system of polytheism, which was adopted and modified by the Semitic inhabitants. The Accadians were great in magic, and the Greek magos, a magician, is derived from an Accadian word equivalent to "reverend."

The city of Babylon was not the first seat of power. The earliest records yet discovered are those of a monarch whose capital was Ur (now Mugheir). Art was already far advanced, and the extent of the monarch's resources is seen in the ruins of the temple of the sun-god built by him; it is calculated that 30,000,000 bricks must have been used in its construction. Centuries, apparently, after this, a fresh invasion from Elam is recorded, to which the exact date can be assigned of 2280 B.C. Another Elamite conqueror, named Cudur-mabug, extended his sovereignty over Palestine, and it is inferred that a sovereign of this dynasty is the Chedorlaomer of Genesis (the name in Accad would be Kudurlagameri, "worshiper of the god Lagamaru "). Some time after this, the seat of power was finally fixed at Babylon, and the Semitic tongue now began to supersede the Accadian.

The cities in the northern division of the country had been founded by colonists from the s., and were long ruled as dependencies of Babylonia. At length they grew into the independent kingdom of Assyria; and in the 14th c. B.C. an Assyrian monarch captured Babylon. From that time the position of the southern state becomes more and more subordinate to the northern, and finally sinks into a province. Babylonia, however, was not always a submissive vassal. Under the leadership of Chaldean chiefs, it made many struggles for independence. The Chaldeans are first heard of in the ninth c. before Christ as a small Accadian tribe on the Persian gulf; but they became so prominent in these struggles that they latterly gave their name to the whole province of Babylonia, which came to be styled Chaldea. The name of one of those Chaldean chiefs, Merodach-Baladan, occurs both in scripture and in the inscriptions. From the former, we know that this king sent a message to Hezekiah, king of Judah, ostensibly to inquire about his recovery, probably with a view to an alliance against Assyria; and from the latter, that Merodach was expelled by Sargon, king of Assyria, that he made a fresh attempt to recover his throne, and was finally dethroned by Sennacherib. The complete subjection of B. to Assyria at this time (680 B.C.) is proved also from the scripture account, which states that Esarhaddon, son of Sennacherib, reigned in Babylon. About fifty years afterwards, Nabopolassar, governor of B. for the Assyrian king, proved faithless to his trust, and entered into an alliance with the Median king, Cyaxares, for the overthrow of the ruling state. See ASSYRIA. This undertaking was successful, and B. now (625 B.C.) became, though it was but for a short time, an independent and conquering power. The son of Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar II., next defeated the Egyptian king, Necho, at Circesium (Karchemish), on the Euphrates (604 B.C.), and thus annihilated the Egyptian dominion in Asia. He then subdued Jehoiakim, king of Judah; and in consequence of repeated revolts, destroyed Jerusalem, and put an end to the kingdom of Judah under Zedekiahı (588 B.C.), carrying the inhabitants captive to Babylon. The Phenicians submitted to him voluntarily, with the exception of Tyre, which underwent an obstinate siege without yielding. After a fortunate expedition against Egypt, Nebuchadnezzar turned his attention to the adornment of his capital; and the greater part at least of those buildings usually ascribed to a very early period, and especially to the mythical Semiramis, belong to him. After his death (562 B.C), the Neo-Babylonian empire fell to pieces as suddenly as it had sprung up, and under Nabonedus (Nabunita, in the cuneiform inscriptions, and in Herodotus, Labynetos), who had entered into an alliance with Croesus of Lydia, against Persia, it came under the dominion of Cyrus (539 B.C.). The Belshazzar of scripture is thought to be the son of Labynetos, to whom was confided the defense of B., while the elder prince held Borsippa. From this time B. appears on the Persian monuments as a Persian satrapy, under the name of Babirus.

With the overthrow of the Persian monarchy, B. came under the short lived dominion of Alexander the Great, who died in that city (323 B.C.). Seleucus I., to whom it had been promised at the conference of Triparadisus, contested and won the possession of it from Antigonus (312 B.C.). About 140 B.C., it was taken from the Syrian monarchs by the Parthians. It came into the hands of the Romans only temporarily, first under Trajan (114 A.D.), under Septimius Severus (199 A.D.), and again, under Julian (363 A.D.). When, in 650, the successors of Mohammed put an end to the new Persian monarchy of the Sassanides, the province of B., where Bagdad was built (762-766), became the seat of the califs till 1258. Since 1638, when the Turks, for the second time, took it from the Persians, it has been under the dominion of Turkey, divided into the pashalics of Bagdad and Basra.

The classic writers represent the civilization of the ancient Babylonians as of a high stamp. The government was despotic, of a kind to suit a crowded, luxurious, and effeminate population. Arts and commerce were highly flourishing-the last was