t, the Cyrenaica--all countries of
great, or at least considerable, productiveness. The two richest grain
tracts of the ancient world, the best pasture regions, the districts
which produced the most valuable horses, the most abundant of known
gold-fields, were included within the limits of the Empire, which may
be looked upon as self-sufficing, containing within it all that man in
those days required, not only for his necessities, but even for his most
cherished luxuries.

The productiveness of the Empire was the natural result of its
possessing so many and such large rivers. Six streams of the first
class, having courses exceeding a thousand miles in length, helped to
fertilize the lands which owned the sway of the Great King. These were
the Nile, the Indus, the Euphrates, the Jaxartes, the Oxus, and the
Tigris. Two of the six have been already described in these volumes, and
therefore will not need to detain us here; but a few words must be
said with respect to each of the remaining four, if our sketch of the
geography of the Empire is to make any approach to completeness.

The Nile was only in the latter part of its course a Persian stream.
Flowing, as we now know that it does, from within a short distance of
the equator, it had accomplished more than three fourths of its course
before it entered a Persian province. It ran, however, through Persian
territory a distance of about six hundred miles, and conferred on
the tract through which it passed immeasurable benefits. The Greeks
sometimes maintained that "Egypt was the gift of the river;" and, though
this was very far from being a correct statement in the sense intended,
there is a meaning of the words in which we may accept them as
expressing a fact. Egypt is only what she is through her river. The Nile
gives her all that makes her valuable. This broad, ample, and unfailing
stream not only by its annual inundation enriches the soil and prepares
it for tillage in a manner that renders only the lightest further labor
necessary, but serves as a reservoir from which inexhaustible supplies
of the precious fluid can be obtained throughout the whole of the year.
The water, which rises towards the end of June, begins to subside early
in October, and for half the year--from December till June--Egypt is
only cultivable through irrigation. She produces, however, during this
period, excellent crops--even at the present day, when there are few
canals--from the facility with wh