Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/127

 was impossible for him to be so near Persepolis without gratifying his curiosity.'My expectation,' he says, 'was greatly excited. Chardin, when I was a mere child, had inspired me with a great desire to see these ruins.' He was, however, merely travelling for health; and he had no intention of undertaking the onerous duties of an itinerant antiquarian. There was indeed no longer any necessity. 'The ruins have been so accurately described, measured, and delineated by our friend Porter that nothing remains to be done; and I can abandon myself entirely to the luxury of imagination, of which the line, compass and pencil, and the intolerable labour they bring on, are eminently destructive.'

On August 17, I821, he enjoyed the first view of the ruins from his resting place, a mile distant, and with unusual philosophy he repressed his curiosity and continued his march to Murgab. 'I took,' he writes, 'a capricious kind of pleasure in not going to them, and forcing' mvself to be contented with this general survey.' He passed the little nook of Naksh-i-Rejeb and the ruins of Istakhr, and at length encamped before the 'Meshed i Mader i Saliman.' It will be recollected that the learning of Ouseley had decisively negatived the sagacious intuition of the more brilliant Morier, and the subsequent discovery of the name of Cyrus on the inscriptions at Murgab was as yet far from being accepted as decisive of the matter. The true site of the tomb of Cyrus was therefore still in dispute, and Rich could only venture to write that he 'began to think that this in reality must be the tomb.' He hoped, however. to be able to contribute something to the settlement of the question, but when he left he