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) in history; and the more so, as during the period of
her greatness scarcely any nation with which she came in contact
possessed nearly so extensive a territory.

Within the limits here assigned to Assyria, the face of the country is
tolerably varied. Possessing, on the whole, perhaps, a predominant
character of flatness, the territory still includes some important
ranges of hills, while on the two sides it abuts upon lofty
mountain-chains. Towards the north and east it is provided by nature
with an ample supply of water, rills everywhere flowing from the
Armenian and Kurdish ranges, which soon collect into rapid and abundant
rivers. The central, southern, and western regions are, however, less