the south Chaldaea had no neighbor. Here a spacious sea, with few
shoals, land-locked, and therefore protected from the violent storms of
the Indian Ocean, invited to commerce, offering a ready communication
with India and Ceylon, as well as with Arabia Felix, Ethiopia, and Egypt.
It is perhaps to this circumstance of her geographical position, as much
as to any other, that ancient Chaldaea owes her superiority over her
neighbors, and her right to be regarded as one of the five great
monarchies of the ancient world. Commanding at once the sea, which
reaches here deep into the land, and the great rivers by means of which
the commodities of the land were most conveniently brought down to the
sea, she lay in the highway of trade, and could scarcely fail to profit
by her position. There is sufficient reason to believe that Ur, the
first capital, was a great maritime emporium; and if so, it can scarcely
be doubted that to commerce and trade, at the least in part, the early
development of Chaldaean greatness was owing.

CHAPTER II.

CLIMATE AND PRODUCTIONS.

"Ager totius Asiae fertilissimus."--PLIN. H. N. vi. 26.

Lower Mesopotamia, or Chaldaea, which lies in the same latitude with
Central China, the Punjab, Palestine, Marocco, Georgia, Texas, and
Central California, has a climate the warmth of which is at least equal
to that of any of those regions. Even in the more northern part of the
country, the district about Baghdad, the thermometer often rises during
the summer to 120 deg. of Fahrenheit in the shade; and the inhabitants
are forced to retreat to their _serdabs_ or cellars, where they remain
during the day, in an atmosphere which, by the entire exclusion of the
sun's rays, is reduced to about 100 deg. Lower down the valley, at
Zobair, Busrah, and Mohammrah, the summer temperature is still higher;
and, owing to the moisture of the atmosphere, consequent on the vicinity
of the sea, the heat is of that peculiarly oppressive character which
prevails on the sea-coast of Hindustan, in Ceylon, in the West Indian
Islands, at New Orleans, and in other places whose situation is similar.
The vital powers languish under this oppression, which produces in the
European a lassitude of body and a prostration of mind that wholly unfit
him for active duties. On the Asiatic, however, these influences seem to
have little effect. The Cha'b Arabs, who at present inhabit the region,
are a tall and warlike race, strong-limbed