taries join it from the north-east and the north-west, the
Shirwan changes its course and begins to run south of west, a direction,
which, it pursues till it enters the low country, about lat. 35 deg. 5',
near Semiram. Thence to the Tigris it has a course which in direct
distance is 150 miles, and 200 if we include only main windings. The
whole course cannot be less than 380 miles, which is about the length of
the Great Zab river. The width attained before the confluence with the
Tigris is 60 yards, or three times the width of the Greater, and seven
times that of the Lesser Zab.

On the opposite side of the Tigris, the traveller comes upon a region
far less favored by nature than that of which we have been lately
speaking. Western Assyria has but a scanty supply of water; and unless
the labor of man is skilfully applied to compensate this natural
deficiency, the greater part of the region tends to be, for ten months
out of the twelve, a desert. The general character of the country is
level, but not alluvial. A line of mountains, rocky and precipitous, but
of no great elevation, stretches across the northern part of the region,
running nearly due east and west, and extending from the Euphrates at
Rum-kaleh to Til and Chelek upon the Tigris. Below this, a vast
slightly undulating plain extends from the northern mountains to the
Babylonian alluvium, only interrupted about midway by a range of low
limestone hills called the Sinjar, which leaving the Tigris near Mosul
runs nearly from east to west across central Mesopotamia, and strikes
the Euphrates half-way between Rakkeh and Kerkesiyeh, nearly in long.
40 deg..

The northern mountain region, called by Strabo "Mons Masius," and by the
Arabs the Karajah Dagh towards the west, and towards the east the Jebel
Tur, is on the whole a tolerably fertile country. It contains a good
deal of rocky land; but has abundant springs, and in many parts is well
wooded. Towards the west it is rather hilly than mountainous; but
towards the east it rises considerably, and the cone above Mardin is
both lofty and striking. The waters flowing from the range consist, on
the north, of a small number of brooks, which after a short course fall
into the Tigris; on the south, of more numerous and more copious
streams, which gradually unite, and eventually form two rather important
rivers. These rivers are the Belik, known anciently as the Bileeha, and
the Western Khabour, called Habor in Scripture, an