s, as Pognon, Jaeger,
Guyard, McCurdy and Brinton, who side with Halevy.

[15] See now Dr. Brinton's paper, "The Protohistoric Ethnography of
Western Asia" (_Proceed. Amer. Philos. Soc._, 1895), especially pp.
18-22.

CHAPTER II.

THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE.

I.

The Babylonians and Assyrians with whom we are concerned in this volume
dwelt in the region embraced by the Euphrates and the Tigris,--the
Babylonians in the south, or the Euphrates Valley, the Assyrians to the
northeast, in the region extending from the Tigris into the Kurdish
Mountain districts; while the northwestern part of Mesopotamia--the
northern half of the Euphrates district--was the seat of various empires
that were alternately the rivals and the subjects of either Babylonia or
Assyria.

The entire length of Babylonia was about 300 miles; the greatest breadth
about 125 miles. The entire surface area was some 23,000 square miles,
or about the size of West Virginia. The area of Assyria, with a length
of 350 miles and a breadth varying from 170 to 300 miles, covered 75,000
square miles, which would make it somewhat smaller than the state of
Nebraska. In the strict sense, the term Mesopotamia should be limited to
the territory lying between the Euphrates and the Tigris above their
junction, in the neighborhood of Baghdad, and extending northwards to
the confines of the Taurus range; while the district to the south of
Baghdad, and reaching to the Persian Gulf, may more properly be spoken
of as the Euphrates Valley; and a third division is represented by the
territory to the east of the Tigris, from Baghdad, and up to the Kurdish
Mountains; but while this distinction is one that may be justly
maintained, in view of the different character that the southern valley
presents from the northern plain, it has become so customary, in popular
parlance, to think of the entire territory along and between the
Euphrates and Tigris as one country, that the term Mesopotamia in this
broad sense may be retained, with the division suggested by George
Rawlinson, into Upper and Lower Mesopotamia. The two streams, as they
form the salient traits of the region, are the factors that condition
the character of the inhabitants and the culture that once flourished
there. The Euphrates, or, to give the more correct pronunciation, Purat,
signifies the 'river' _par excellence_. It is a quiet stream, flowing
along in majestic dignity almost from its two sources, in the Arm