its
valleys are scarcely so fertile, or its products so abundant and varied,
it is still a country where a numerous population may find subsistence.
The most striking contrast which it offers to the Zagros region is in
the direction of its mountain ranges. The Zagros ridges run from
north-west to south-east, like the principal mountains of Italy,
Greece, Arabia, Hindustan, and Cochin China; those of Armenia have a
course from a little north of east to a little south of west, like the
Spanish Sierras, the Swiss and Tyrolese Alps, the Southern Carpathians,
the Greater Balkan, the Cilician Taurus, the Cyprian Olympus, and the
Thian Chan. Thus the axes of the two chains are nearly at right angles
to one another, the triangular basin of Van occurring at the point of
contact, and softening the abruptness of the transition. Again, whereas
the Zagros mountains present their gradual slope to the Mesopotamian
lowland, and rise in higher and higher ridges as they recede from the
mountains of Armenia ascend at once to their full heignt from the level
of the Tigris, and the ridges then gradually decline towards the Euxine.
It follows from this last contrast, that, while Zagros invites the
inhabitants of the Mesopotamian plain to penetrate its recesses, which
are at first readily accessible, and only grow wild and savage towards
the interior, the Armenian mountains repel by presenting their greatest
difficulties and most barren aspect at once, seeming, with their rocky
sides and snow-clad summits, to form an almost insurmountable obstacle
to an invading host. Assyrian history bears traces of this difference;
for while the mountain region to the east is gradually subdued and
occupied by the people of the plain, that on the north continues to the
last in a state of hostility and semi-independence.

West of Assyria (according to the extent which has here been given to
it), the border countries were, towards the south, Arabia, and towards
the north, Syria. A desert region, similar to that which bounds Chaldaea
in this direction, extends along the Euphrates as far north as the 36th
parallel, approaching commonly within a very short distance of the
river. This has been at all times the country of the wandering Arabs. It
is traversed in places by rocky ridges of a low elevation, and
intercepted by occasional _wadys_, but otherwise it is a continuous
gravelly or sandy plain, incapable of sustaining a settled population.
Between the desert a