volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

90 NimrM Dam.
Be this as it may, the ridge of stones caused our raftsman
some anxiety, for the raft became much shaken, and the
creaking of the poles and straining of their lashings
showed that it was being subjected to great pressure
unevenly applied. A few minutes later we heard the
skins scraping on the stones of the barrier, and we
moved to the back of the raft with the view of lessening
the weight on them. Meanwhile the raftsman and his
helper thrust mightily with their sweeps and the raft
turned broadside on and dropped over the barrier into
the swirl of waters just below it.
Both Thevenofi and Tavernier say strange things
about the " Nimrud Dam." The former connects the
remains of a castle (which he calls " Top-Calai," and says
he saw on the right {sic) bank) with the bridge, which
was built by Nimrod so that he might cross over by
it to the other side where his mistress lived. Tavernier
says that the dam stretches right across the river from
one bank to the other, and that it is 200 feet " de large,"
and causes the river in flowing over it to make " une
cascade d'environ vingt brasses." Some Arabs told him
that it was built by Alexander the Great, who wished
to alter the course of the river, and others thought that
Darius had built it to stop the Macedonians from
descending the river. When Tavernier reached the dam
he and his companions left their raft and had all their
goods removed from it. He admired the way in which
the raftsmen worked the raft over the dam, and watched
it with astonishment as it righted itself on the waters
after a fall of 26 feet \^ There must be some mistake
in the figures, or exaggeration, or misprint, for the dam
at Nimrud can never have been 26 feet high. Niebuhr
visited it and examined it and thought that it was not
the work of the Arabs, and that it had been built to
^ Voyage, ii, p. 108.
' " Car on ne peut voir sans etonnement la chute de ce Kilet
[i.e., Kalak], qui tombe tout d'un coup de la hauteur de pres de sixvingt
pieds, et qui passant parmi les ondes qui boiiillonnent entre
les rochers est soutenu des oudres, et demeure toujours sur I'eau."
Six Voyages, Paris, 1676, vol. i, p. 204 (4th Voyage to Asia).