udicious, "is extremely fertile, producing
great quantities of rice, dates, and grain of different kinds, though it
is not cultivated to above half the degree of which it is susceptible."
"The soil is rich," says another, "not less bountiful than that on the
banks of the Egyptian Nile." "Although greatly changed by the neglect of
man," observes a third, "those portions of Mesopotamia which are still
cultivated, as the country about Hillah, show that the region has all the
fertility ascribed to it by Herodotus." There is a general recognition
of the productive qualities of the district, combined with a general
lamentation over the existing neglect and apathy which allow such gifts
of Nature to run to waste. Cultivation, we are told, is now the
exception, instead of the rule. "Instead of the luxuriant fields, the
groves and gardens of former times, nothing now meets the eye but an arid
waste." Many parts of Chaldaea, naturally as productive as any others,
are at present pictures of desolation. Large tracts are covered by
unwholesome marshes, producing nothing but enormous reeds; others lie
waste and bare, parched up by the fierce heat of the sun, and utterly
destitute of water; in some places, as has been already mentioned,
sand-drifts accumulate, and threaten to make the whole region a mere
portion of the desert.

The great cause of this difference between ancient and modern Chaldaea is
the neglect of the water-courses. Left to themselves, the rivers tend to
desert some portions of the alluvium wholly, which then become utterly
unproductive; while they spread themselves out over others, which are
converted thereby into pestilential swamps. A well-arranged system of
embankments and irrigating canals is necessary in order to develop the
natural capabilities of the country, and to derive from the rich soil of
this vast alluvium the valuable and varied products which it can be made
to furnish.

Among the natural products of the region two stand out as pre-eminently
important-the wheat-plant and the date-palm. [PLATE IV., Fig. 2.]
According to the native tradition, wheat was indigenous in Chaldaea; and
the first comers thus found themselves provided by the bountiful hand of
Nature with the chief necessary of life. The luxuriance of the plant was
excessive. Its leaves were as broad as the palm of a man's hand, and its
tendency to grow leaves was so great that (as we have seen) the
Babylonians used to mow it twice