ver into the other, at the season of their respective inundations.
Subdividing themselves into smaller and smaller branches, they refreshed
the dry lands, and supplied the deficiency of rain. They facilitated the
intercourse of peace and commerce; and, as the dams could be speedily
broke down, they armed the despair of the Assyrians with the means of
opposing a sudden deluge to the progress of an invading army. To the
soil and climate of Assyria, nature had denied some of her choicest
gifts, the vine, the olive, and the fig-tree; * but the food which
supports the life of man, and particularly wheat and barley, were
produced with inexhaustible fertility; and the husbandman, who committed
his seed to the earth, was frequently rewarded with an increase of two,
or even of three, hundred. The face of the country was interspersed with
groves of innumerable palm-trees; and the diligent natives celebrated,
either in verse or prose, the three hundred and sixty uses to which
the trunk, the branches, the leaves, the juice, and the fruit, were
skilfully applied. Several manufactures, especially those of leather and
linen, employed the industry of a numerous people, and afforded valuable
materials for foreign trade; which appears, however, to have been
conducted by the hands of strangers. Babylon had been converted into a
royal park; but near the ruins of the ancient capital, new cities had
successively arisen, and the populousness of the country was displayed
in the multitude of towns and villages, which were built of bricks dried
in the sun, and strongly cemented with bitumen; the natural and peculiar
production of the Babylonian soil. While the successors of Cyrus reigned
over Asia, the province of Syria alone maintained, during a third part
of the year, the luxurious plenty of the table and household of the
Great King. Four considerable villages were assigned for the subsistence
of his Indian dogs; eight hundred stallions, and sixteen thousand mares,
were constantly kept, at the expense of the country, for the royal
stables; and as the daily tribute, which was paid to the satrap,
amounted to one English bushel of silver, we may compute the annual
revenue of Assyria at more than twelve hundred thousand pounds sterling.

Chapter XXIV: The Retreat And Death Of Julian.--Part III.

The fields of Assyria were devoted by Julian to the calamities of war;
and the philosopher retaliated on a guiltless people the acts of rapine
and cru