volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

The Great Swamp of Khdt^ntyah. 211
was about fifty years of age. Though he had fed us
and our beasts, and the soldiers and their horses, he
absolutely refused to let any of his people receive a
present from me, and the only thing he would accept
himself was a large tin of tobacco, which he promptly
divided among his friends. We left Masalat at 7.35
and rode northwards, leaving Ti'ban^ on our left, and
had a good view of Tall Kawkab, or the " Hill of the
Fire," in the far distance.^ We then turned to the
right and rode almost due east, and in two hours we
came in sight of the great swamp called Al-Hawl, or
Al-Hul, which extends from the salt lake of Khatuniyah
to the Khibur. In 1891, as in 1851 when Layard saw
it, it was the home of lions and many other kinds of
wild beasts, and on the edge of it we saw a lion walking
along unconcernedly. The beast must have winded us,
for he stopped and looked at us for some time, and then
he turned his head away and continued his walk calmly.
This swamp and the marshy land in the neighbourhood
were probably parts of the district where Tiglath
Pileser I captured and slew the male elephants and lions
which he mentions in his Annals.'
About one o'clock the day changed and a bitterly
cold wind was blowing, and snow began to fall, and we
determined to make no halt but to press on to the place
where we were to pass the night. Though we were wet
to the skin, and our guide could not see far before him,
we moved on at a fair pace, for the ground was chiefly
limestone, and there was good foothold for all the
animals. About three o'clock, whenever the dizzy dance
1 Yakut calls T^'bin a "village on the Khabur" (iii, p. 485), but
the numerous mounds at this place suggest that a town of considerable
size once existed here. It probably was destroyed or fell into decay
in the tenth or eleventh century.
^ Layard visited the "Cone of Koukab," and says that it is vol-
canic, and 300 feet high, and that it rises in the centre of a crater
just as do the cones of Vesuvius and Etna in their craters. Nineveh
and Babylon, p. 308.
^ He slew 10 elephants and captured 4 alive ; and he slew 120
lions on foot, and 800 from his chariot. Rawlinson, Cun. Inscr.
(Tiglath Pileser I, col. vi, 1. 70 ff.).
p 2