can support a large settled population. This
forms the chief portion of the region which the ancients called Media,
as being the country inhabited by the race on whose history we are about
to enter.

Media, however, included, besides this, another tract of considerable
size and importance. At the north-western angle of the region above
described, in the corner whence the two great chains branch out to
the south and to the east, is a tract composed almost entirely of
mountains, which the Greeks called Atropatene, and which is now known
as Azerbijan. This district lies further to the north than the rest of
Media, being in the same parallels with the lower part of the Caspian
Sea. It comprises the entire basin of Lake Urumiyeh, together with the
country intervening between that basin and the high mountain chain which
curves round the south-western corner of the Caspian, It is a region
generally somewhat sterile, but containing a certain quantity of very,
fertile territory, more particularly in the Urumiyeh basin, and towards
the mouth of the river Araxes.

The boundaries of Media are given somewhat differently by different
writers, and no doubt they actually varied at different periods; but the
variations were not great, and the natural limits, on three sides at any
rate, may be laid down with tolerable precision. Towards the north the
boundary was at first the mountain chain closing in on that side the
Urumiyeh basin, after which it seems to have been held that the true
limit was the Araxes, to its entrance on the low country, and then the
mountain chain west and south of the Caspian. Westward, the line of
demarcation may be best regarded as, towards the south, running along
the centre of the Zagros region; and, above this, as formed by that
continuation of the Zagros chain which separates the Urumiyeh from
the Van basin. Eastward, the boundary was marked by the spur from the
Elburz, across which lay the pass known as the Pylse Caspise, and below
this by the great salt desert, whose western limit is nearly in the
same longitude. Towards the south there was no marked line or natural
boundary; and it is difficult to say with any exactness how much of the
great plateau belonged to Media and how much to Persia. Having regard,
however, to the situation of Hamadan, which, as the capital, should have
been tolerably central, and to the general account which historians and
geographers give of the size of Media, we may place the