it is studded witness to the density of its ancient population--for
Northern Mesopotamia was once so populous and full of riches that Rome
and the rulers of Iran fought seven centuries for its possession, till
the Arabs conquered it from both.

The railway has now reached Nisibin, the Roman frontier fortress
heroically defended and ceded in bitterness of heart, and runs past
Dara, which the Persians never took. Westward lies Urfa--named Edessa by
Alexander's men after their Macedonian city of running waters[49]; later
the seat of a Christian Syriac culture whose missionaries were heard in
China and Travancore; still famous, under Arab dominion, for its
Veronica and 300 churches; and restored for a moment to Christendom as
the capital of a Crusader principality, till the Mongols trampled it
into oblivion and the Osmanlis made it a name for butchery.

From Urfa to Nisibin there can be fields again. The climate has not
changed, and wherever the Bedawi pitches his tents and scratches the
ground there is proof of the old fertility. Only anarchy has banished
cultivation; for, since the Ottoman pretension was established over the
land, it has been the battleground of brigand tribes--Kurds from the
hills and Arabs from the desert, skirmishing or herding their flocks,
making or breaking alliance, but always robbing any tiller of the land
of the fruits of his labour.

"If once," Dr. Rohrbach prophesies, "the peasant population were sure of
its life and property, it would joyfully expand, push out into the
desert, and bring new land under the plough; in a few years the villages
would spring up, not by dozens, but by hundreds."

At present cultivation is confined to the Armenian foot-hills--an