ceive an
almost unmistakable line of demarcation. On the east the high
mountain-chain of Zagros. penetrable only in one or two places, forms a
barrier of the most marked character, and is beyond a doubt the natural
limit for which we are looking. On the south a less striking, but not
less clearly defined, line--formed by the abutment of the upper and
slightly elevated plain on the alluvium of the lower valley--separates
Assyria from Babylonia, which is best regarded as a distinct country. In
the two remaining directions, there is more doubt as to the most proper
limit. Northwards,we may either view Mount Masius as the natural
boundary, or the course of the Tigris from Diarbekr to Til, or even
perhaps the Armenian mountain-chain north of this portion of the
Tigris, from whence that river receives its early tributaries. Westward,
we might confine Assyria to the country watered by the affluents of the
Tigris, or extend it so as to in elude the Khabour and its tributaries,
or finally venture to carry it across the whole of Mesopotamia, and make
it be bounded by the Euphrates. On the whole it is thought that in both
the doubted cases the wider limits are historically the truer ones.
Assyrian remains cover the entire country between the Tigris and the
Khabour, and are frequent on both banks of the latter stream, giving
unmistakable indications of a long occupation of that region by the
great Mesopotamian people. The inscriptions show that even a wider tract
was in process of time absorbed by the conquerors; and if we are to draw
a line between the country actually taken into Assyria, and that which
was merely conquered and held in subjection, we can select no better
boundary than the Euphrates westward, and northward the snowy
mountain-chain known to the ancients as Mons Niphates.

If Assyria be allowed the extent which is here assigned to her, she will
be a country, not only very much larger than Chaldaea or Babylonia, but
positively of considerable dimensions. Reaching on the north to the
thirty-eighth and on the south to the thirty-fourth parallel, she had
a length diagonally from Diarbekr to the alluvium of 350 miles, and a
breadth between the Euphrates and Mount Zagros varying from about 300 to
170 miles. Her area was probably not less than 75,000 square miles,
which is more than double that of Portugal, and not much below that of
Great Britain. She would thus from her mere size be calculated to play
an important (part)