United States or Iceland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The city Shurippak, a city which, as thou knowest, Lies on the Euphrates, That city was old, for the gods thereof, Decided to bring a rainstorm upon it. All of the great gods, Anu, their father, Their counsellor, the warrior Bel, The herald Ninib, Their leader En-nugi, The lord of unsearchable wisdom, Ea, was with them, To proclaim their resolve to the reed-huts. Reed-hut, reed-hut, wall, wall!

No, he would sail to another world; there he would join a new colony in clearing away the primeval depths of some virgin forest, and tilling the glebes of a rich and untried soil; and, living among them, he would make that place a centre for wide evangelisation the home of religious enthusiasms and equal laws; or he would go as a missionary to the savage and the cannibal, and, sailing from reef to reef, where the coral-islands of the Pacific mirror in the deep waters of their calm lagoon the reed-huts of the savage, and the feathery coronal of tropic trees, he would devote his life to reclaiming from ignorance and barbarism the waste places of a degraded humanity.

Protected by its swamps, the region contains a few primitive settlements of the wild 'Afej tribesmen, each a group of reed-huts clustering around the mud fort of its ruling sheikh. Their chief enemies are the Shammâr, who dispute with them possession of the pastures.

"Let it pass," he said, "pass now, pass utterly." In the momentary silence the old man coughed, then waited with eager eyes; and the long long hum of London hummed as it always has since first the reed-huts were set up by the river, changing its note at times but always humming, louder now than it was in years gone by, but humming night and day though its voice be cracked with age; so it hummed on.