of broken and pulverized
brick with which it is mixed. These colours vary in different places, but
from Mount Masius to the shores of the Persian Gulf, from the Euphrates to
the Tigris, the traveller is met almost constantly by the one melancholy
sight--of a country spreading out before him to the horizon, in which
neglect has gone on until the region which the biblical tradition
represents as the cradle of the human race has been rendered incapable of
supporting human life.[26]

The physiognomy of Mesopotamia has then been profoundly modified since the
fall of the ancient civilization. By the indolence of man it has lost its
adornments, or rather its vesture, in the ample drapery of waving palms and
standing corn that excited the admiration of Herodotus.[27] But the general
characteristics and leading contours of the landscape remain what they
were. Restore in thought one of those Babylonian structures whose lofty
ruins now serve as observatories for the explorer or passing traveller.
Suppose yourself, in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, seated upon the summit of
the temple of Bel, some hundred or hundred and twenty yards above the level
of the plain. At such a height the smiling and picturesque details which
were formerly so plentiful and are now so rare, would not be appreciated.
The domed surfaces of the woods would seem flat, the varied cultivation,
the changing colours of the fields and pastures would hardly be
distinguished. You would be struck then, as you are struck to-day, by the
extent and uniformity of the vast plain which stretches away to all the
points of the compass.

In Assyria, except towards the south where the two rivers begin to draw in
towards each other, the plains are varied by gentle undulations. As the
traveller approaches the northern and eastern frontiers, chains of hills,
and even snowy peaks, loom before him. In Chaldaea there is nothing of the
kind. The only accidents of the ground are those due to human industry; the
dead level stretches away as far as the eye can follow it, and, like the
sea, melts into the sky at the horizon.

NOTES:

[18] HERODOTUS, i. 193: He de ge ton Assurion huetai men oligoi.

[19] LOFTUS, _Susiana and Chaldaea_, i. vol. 8vo. 1857, London, p. 73.

[20] LOFTUS, _Susiana and Chaldaea_, p. 73; LAYARD, _Discoveries in the
Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon_, p. 146 (i. vol. 8vo. 1853).

[21] HERODOTUS, exaggerates this difference, but it is a real one. "The
plant," he