ldness of the climate; and Indian princes, expelled from
the Peninsula, are wont, from a similar cause, to fix their residence at
Busrah or Baghdad. The cold of which travellers speak is relative rather
than positive. The range of the thermometer in Lower Chaldoea is perhaps
100 deg., whereas in England it is scarcely 80 deg., there is thus a
greater difference between the heat of summer and the cold of winter
there than here; but the actual greatest cold--that which benumbs the
Arabs and makes them fall from their horses--is no more than we often
experience in April, or even in May.

The rainy season of Chaldaea is in the winter time. Heavy showers fall
in November, and still more in December, which sensibly raise the level
of the rivers. As the spring advances the showers become lighter and
less frequent; but still they recur from time to time, until the summer
sets in, about May. From May to November rain is very rare indeed. The
sky continues for weeks or even months without a cloud; and the sun's
rays are only tempered for a short time at morning and at evening by a
gray mist or haze. It is during these months that the phenomenon of the
mirage is most remarkable. The strata of air, unequally heated, and
therefore differing in rarity, refract the rays of light, fantastically
enlarging and distorting the objects seen through them, which frequently
appear raised from the ground and hanging in mid-air, or else, by a
repetition of their image, which is reflected in a lower stratum, give
the impression that they stand up out of a lake. Hence the delusion
which has so often driven the traveller to desperation--the "image of a
cool, rippling, watery mirror," which flies before him as he advances,
and at once provokes and mocks his thirst.

The fertility of Chaldaea in ancient times was proverbial.

"Of all countries that we know," says Herodotus, "there is none that is
so fruitful in grain. It makes no pretension, indeed, of growing the
fig, the olive, the vine, or any other tree of the kind; but in grain it
is so fruitful as to yield commonly two hundred-fold, and when the
production is at the greatest, even three hundred-fold. The blade of the
wheat-plant and of the barley-plant is often four fingers in breadth. As
for the millet and the sesame, I shall not say to what height they grow,
though within my own knowledge; for I am not ignorant that what I have
already written concerning the fruitfulness of Babyl