Here far-sighted engineers and stronghanded rulers turned the waters of
Babylon into waters of life, and the _Sawâd_ became a great heart of
civilisation, breathing in man-power--Sumerians and Amorites and
Kassites and Aramaeans and Chaldeans and Persians and Greeks and
Arabs--and breathing out the works of man--grain and wool and Babylonish
garments, inventions still used in our machine-shops, and emotions still
felt in our religion.

"The land," writes Herodotus[52], who saw it in its prime, "has a little
rain, and this nourishes the corn at the root; but the crops are matured
and brought to harvest by water from the river--not, as in Egypt, by the
river flooding over the fields, but by human labour and _shadufs_[53]
For Babylonia, like Egypt, is one network of canals, the largest of
which is navigable. It is far the best corn-land of all the countries I
know. There is no attempt at arboriculture--figs or vines or olives--but
it is such superb corn-land that the average yield is two-hundredfold,
and three-hundredfold in the best years. The wheat and barley there are
a good four inches broad in the blade, and millet and sesame grow as big
as trees--but I will not state the dimensions I have ascertained,
because I know that, for anyone who has not visited Babylonia and
witnessed these facts about the crops for himself, they would be
altogether beyond belief."

Harnessed in the irrigation channels, the Tigris and Euphrates had
become as mighty forces of production as the Nile and the Ganges, the
Yangtse and the Hoang-Ho.

"This," Herodotus adds[54], "is the best demonstration I can give of the
wealth of the Babylonians: All the lands ruled by the King of Persia are