Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/64

RAJGIR: AN ANCIENT BABYLON 45 bridge, and we can walk on it though its level is somewhat sunken. Easily, then, we make our way to the royal mansion, clearly marked as this is at its four corners by the foundations of four bastion towers. But turning again to the bridge, we find an unbroken line of this same asphalt running along the bank by the way we have come, though sooth to say we might never have noticed it if we had not been tracing it out from the con- spicuous mass.

Was this, the river-front opposite to the palace, protected by the steep hills behind, and running from the town plaza to the bathing ghat beyond, and across this to the city gates — was this the High Street of the ancient town ? Every now and again, as day after day we pace brooding up and down the distance, every now and again we come upon some hitherto unnoticed mass of masonry or mason's tbbl-marks. Here are a couple of blocks lying on their sides, as if to form a seat in a river-wall. Here again traces of steps or fallen ornaments. At one place on the opposite bank, deeply sunk between masses of earth and vegetation, there runs down to the riverside a small ravine that would now pass as a gully if the pavement or ancient asphalt did not prove it — in days before Pompeii and Herculaneum were born — to have been a street.

What were the houses like that looked down upon these footways ? What was the life that was lived in them ? How long had the place been