stern
boundary of the region mapped out On the south-east is Susiana, now a
large portion of Persia.

"This beautiful map tempts me to be more diffuse than I should have been
without it; but it gives you a bit of ancient geography which will do
you no harm. There are two great rivers which extend through this
territory, the Euphrates and the Tigris, though both of them unite and
flow into the Persian Gulf. Of the former of them the commander has
spoken to you this morning. Scholars have not been able to locate
Paradise, or the Garden of Eden, with anything like precision; but it is
generally supposed to have been between these two great streams. Some
think it was not a place at all, but only a location given to a moral
idea; others place it in the mountains of Armenia or Northern
Mesopotamia."

"The pesky Bible critics!" exclaimed Mrs. Blossom; but Mrs. Belgrave
"hunched her" as the good lady expressed it.

"All this region has been in the possession of various masters, and even
the countries themselves are very much mixed. Assyria was the eastern
portion of the northern part," continued the professor, indicating the
location with his wand. "In the British Museum and elsewhere you have
seen bass-reliefs and figures brought from the ruins of Assyrian cities,
and in these the country is called Assur. In Genesis x. 11, we read:
'Out of that land [Shinar] went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh.'
This was said of Nimrod; Shinar was a name of Babylonia.

"The history becomes complicated, and is a record of the achievements of
the Assyrian kings, Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon, Sennacherib, and others. It
would not be profitable to go over them. The Babylonian monarchy was
before Assyria was founded. The government was a despotism with nothing
to soften it, and the religion was the worship of many gods. Its history
dates back from 913 to 659 years before the birth of Christ, though
there are tablets which carry it back to 2330 A.D. The empire began to
decay in the reign of Sardanapalus, when the governor of Babylon and the
king of Media conspired against it; and Nineveh was captured and
destroyed a little more than 600 years before Christ."

The commander announced another recess at this time, though the party
appeared to be very much interested in the story of these ancient
countries, closely connected with Bible history. Half an hour was spent
in walking the deck and gazing at the shores, which were still the same,
for the sh