f Hit, on the
Euphrates. Except in the immediate vicinity of the river, the northern
division is stony and scantily covered with vegetation, except in
spring. Over the southern division, on the contrary, spreads a deep
alluvial soil, in which even a pebble is rare; and which, though, under
the existing misrule, mainly a waste of marsh and wilderness, needs
only intelligent attention to become, as it was of old, the granary of
western Asia. Except in the extreme south, the rainfall is small and
the air dry. The heat in summer is intense, while bitterly cold northern
blasts sweep the plain in winter. Whirlwinds are not uncommon; and, in
the intervals of the periodical inundations, the fine, dry, powdery
soil is swept, even by moderate breezes, into stifling clouds, or rather
fogs, of dust. Low inequalities, elevations here and depressions there,
diversify the surface of the alluvial region. The latter are occupied
by enormous marshes, while the former support the permanent dwellings of
the present scanty and miserable population.

In antiquity, so long as the canalisation of the country was properly
carried out, the fertility of the alluvial plain enabled great and
prosperous nations to have their home in the Euphrates valley. Its
abundant clay furnished the materials for the masses of sun-dried and
burnt bricks, the remains of which, in the shape of huge artificial
mounds, still testify to both the magnitude and the industry of the
population, thousands of years ago. Good cement is plentiful, while
the bitumen, which wells from the rocks at Hit and elsewhere, not
only answers the same purpose, but is used to this day, as it was in
Hasisadra's time, to pay the inside and the outside of boats.

In the broad lower course of the Euphrates, the stream rarely acquires
a velocity of more than three miles an hour, while the lower Tigris
attains double that rate in times of flood. The water of both great
rivers is mainly derived from the northern and eastern highlands in
Armenia and in Kurdistan, and stands at its lowest level in early autumn
and in January. But when the snows accumulated in the upper basins of
the great rivers, during the winter, melt under the hot sunshine of
spring, they rapidly rise, [1] and at length overflow their banks,
covering the alluvial plain with a vast inland sea, interrupted only
by the higher ridges and hummocks which form islands in a seemingly
boundless expanse of water.

In the occurrence of