agement, of being made one continuous
garden.

CHAPTER III.

THE PEOPLE.

"A mighty nation, an ancient nation."--JEREM. v. 15.

That the great alluvial plain at the mouth of the Euphrates and Tigris
was among the countries first occupied by man after the Deluge, is
affirmed by Scripture, and generally allowed by writers upon ancient
history. Scripture places the original occupation at a time when
language had not yet broken up into its different forms, and when,
consequently, races, as we now understand the term, can scarcely have
existed. It is not, however, into the character of these primeval
inhabitants that we have here to inquire, but into the ethnic affinities
and characteristics of that race, whatever it was, which first
established an important kingdom in the lower part of the plain--a
kingdom which eventually became an empire. According to the ordinary
theory, this race was Aramaic or Semitic. "The name of Aramaeans,
Syrians, or Assyrians," says Niebuhr, "comprises the nations extending
from the mouth of the Euphrates and Tigris to the Euxine, the river
Halys, and Palestine. They applied to themselves the name of Aram, and
the Greeks called them Assyrians, which is the same as Syrians(?).
Within that great extent of country there existed, of course, various
dialectic differences of language; and there can be little doubt but that
in some places the nation was mixed with other races." The early
inhabitants of Lower Mesopotamia, however, he considers to have been pure
Aramaeans, closely akin to the Assyrians, from whom, indeed, he regards
them as only separate politically.

Similar views are entertained by most modern writers. Baron Bunsen, in
one of his latest works, regards the fact as completely established by
the results of recent researches in Babylonia. Professor M. Muller,
though expressing himself with more caution, inclines to the same
conclusion. Popular works, in the shape of Cyclopaedias and short
general histories, diffuse the impression. Hence a difficulty is felt
with regard to the Scriptural statement concerning the first kingdom in
these parts, which is expressly said to have been Cushite or Ethiopian.
"And _Cush begat Nimrod:_ (he began to be a mighty one in the earth;
he was a mighty hunter before the Lord; wherefore it is said, Even as
Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord;) and the beginning of his
kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of