hich made
a rapid concentration of the forces of the Empire impossible, that the
capital, instead of occupying a central position, was placed somewhat
low in the longer of the two arms of the gnomon, and was thus nearly
1000 miles removed from the frontier province of the west. Though in
direct distance, as the crow flies, Babylon is not more than 450 miles
from Damascus, or more than 520 from Jerusalem, yet the necessary detour
by Aleppo is so great that it lengthens the distance, in the one case
by 250, in the other by 380 miles. From so remote a centre it was
impossible for the life-blood to circulate very vigorously to the
extremities.

The Empire was on the whole fertile and well-watered. The two great
streams of Western Asia--the Tigris and the Euphrates--which afforded
an abundant supply of the invaluable fluid to the most important of
the provinces, those of the south-east, have already been described at
length; as have also the chief streams of the Mesopotamian district, the
Belik and the Khabour. But as yet in this work no account has been given
of a number of important rivers in the extreme east and the extreme
west, on which the fertility, and so the prosperity, of the Empire very
greatly depended. It is proposed in the present place to supply this
deficiency.

The principle rivers of the extreme east were the Choaspes, or modern
Kerkhah, the Pasitigris or Eulseus, now the Kuran, the Hedyphon or
Hedypnus, now the Jerahi, and the Oroatis, at present the Tab or
Hindyan. Of these, the Oroatis, which is the most eastern, belongs
perhaps more to Persia than to Babylon; but its lower course probably
fell within the Susianian territory. It rises in the mountains between
Shiraz and Persepolis, about lat. 29 deg. 45', long. 52 deg. 35' E.; and flows
towards the Persian Gulf with a course which is north-west to Failiyun,
then nearly W. to Zehitun, after which it becomes somewhat south of west
to Hindyan, and then S.W. by S. to the sea. The length of the stream,
without counting lesser windings, is 200 miles; its width at Hindyan,
sixteen miles above its mouth, is eighty yards, and to this distance it
is navigable for boats of twenty tons burthen. At first its waters are
pure and sweet, but they gradually become corrupted, and at Hindyan they
are so brackish as not to be fit for use. The Jerahi rises from several
sources in the Kuh Margun, a lofty and precipitous range, forming the
continuation of the chain of Zagros