d ever sailed. But these men of old had never
explored far. They believed that their world was just a very little
world with no other occupants than themselves. They believed it to
be flat, with mountains at either end on which rested a solid metal
dome known as the "firmament."

In this shining circle were windows, in and out of which the sun would
creep by day and the moon and stars by night. And the whole of this
world was, they thought, balanced on the waters. There was water above,
the "waters that be above the firmament," and water below, and water
all round.

[Illustration: BABYLONIAN MAP OF THE WORLD ON CLAY. Showing the ocean
surrounding the world and the position of Babylon on the Euphrates.
In the British Museum.]

Long ages pass away. Let us look again at the green valley of the
Euphrates and Tigris. It has been called the "nursery of
nations"--names have been given to various regions round about, and
cities have arisen on the banks of the rivers. Babylonia, Mesopotamia,
Chaldea, Assyria--all these long names belonged to this region, and
around each centres some of the most interesting history and legend
in the world.

Rafts on the river and caravans on the land carried merchandise far
and wide--men made their way to the "Sea of the Rising Sun," as they
called the Persian Gulf, and to the "Sea of the Setting Sun," as they
called the Mediterranean. They settled on the shores of the Caspian
Sea, on the shores of the Black Sea, on the shores of the Red Sea.
They carried on magnificent trade--cedar, pine, and cypress were
brought from Lebanon to Chaldea, limestone and marble from Syria,
copper and lead from the shores of the Black Sea.

And these dwellers about Babylonia built up a wonderful civilisation.
They had temples and brick-built houses, libraries of tablets
revealing knowledge of astronomy and astrology; they had a literature
of their own. Suddenly from out the city of Ur (Kerbela), near the
ancient mouth of the Euphrates, appears a traveller. There had
doubtless been many before, but records are scanty and hard to piece
together, and a detailed account of a traveller with a name is very
interesting.

"Abram went ... forth to go into the land of Canaan.... And Abram
journeyed, going on still toward the South. And there was a famine
in the land. And Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there." He would
have travelled by the chief caravan routes of Syria into Egypt. Here
about the fertile mouth