sewhere any serious change has been
brought about.

The chief vegetable productions of Babylonia Proper in ancient times
are thus enumerated by Berosus. "The land of the Babylonians," he
says, "produces wheat as an indigenous plant," and has also barley,
and lentils, and vetches, and sesame; the banks of the streams and the
marshes supply edible roots, called gongoe, which have the taste
of barley-cakes. Palms, too, grow in the country, and apples, and
fruit-trees of various kinds. Wheat, it will be observed, and barley are
placed first, since it was especially as a grain country that Babylonia
was celebrated. The testimonies of Herodotus, Theophrastus, Strabo, and
Pliny as to the enormous returns which the Babylonian farmers obtained
from their corn lands have been already cited. No such fertility is
known anywhere in modern times; and, unless the accounts are grossly
exaggerated, we must ascribe it, in part, to the extraordinary vigor of
a virgin soil, a deep and rich alluvium; in part, perhaps, to a peculiar
adaptation of the soil to the wheat plant, which the providence of God
made to grow spontaneously in this region, and nowhere else, so far as
we know, on the whole face of the earth.

Besides wheat, it appears that barley, millet, and lentils were
cultivated for food, while vetches were grown for beasts, and sesame
for the sake of the oil which can be expressed from its seed. All grew
luxuriantly, and the returns of the barley in particular are stated at a
fabulous amount. But the production of first necessity in Babylonia
was the date-palm, which flourished in great abundance throughout the
region, and probably furnished the chief food of the greater portion
of the inhabitants. The various uses to which it was applied have been
stated in the first volume, where a representation of its mode of growth
has been also given.

In the adjoining country of Susiana, or at any rate in the alluvial
portion of it, the principal products of the earth seem to have been
nearly the same as in Babylonia, while the fecundity of the soil was but
little less. Wheat and barley returned to the sower a hundred or even
two hundred fold. The date-palm grew plentifully, more especially in the
vicinity of the towns. Other trees also were common, as probably konars,
acacias, and poplars, which are still found scattered in tolerable
abundance over the plain country. The neighboring mountains could
furnish good timber of various kinds; bu